As in its form, so in its spirit, the verse of
Tennyson
expresses
a constant and controlling sense of law and order.
a constant and controlling sense of law and order.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
Twice twelve hours first must circle ere binds
them, who Vikinga comrade would rest! "
## p. 14575 (#141) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14575
Thus his laws carved he out, and fresh exploits each day and fresh
fame to strange coast-lands he brought;
And his like found he none on the blue-rolling sea, and his cham-
pions right willing they fought.
But himself sat all darkly, with rudder in hand, and looked down on
the slow-rocking spray;-
"Deep thou art! Peace perchance in those depths still may bloom,
but above here all peace dies away.
"Is the White God aged? Let him take his good sword,-I will
fall should it so be decreed:
But he sits in yon sky, gloomy thoughts sending down; ne'er my
soul from their sadness is freed! "
Yet when battle is near, like the fresh eagle flying, his spirit fierce
soars with delight;
Loudly thunders his voice, and with clear brow he stands, like the
lightener still foremost in fight.
Thus from vict'ry to vict'ry he ceaselessly swam, on that wide-
foaming grave all secure;
And fresh islands he saw, and fresh bays in the south, till fair winds
on to Greek-Land allure.
When its groves he beheld, in the green tide reflected, its temples
in ruin bent low,-
Freja knows what he thought, and the scald; and if e'er thou hast
known how to love-thou wilt know!
"Here our dwelling had been! Here's the isle, here's the land: of
this temple my sire oft would tell;
Hither 'twas, hither 'twas, I invited my maid; -ah! she, cruel, the
North loved too well!
"Mong these happy green vales dwells not peace? and remembrance,
ah! haunts she not columns so fair?
Like the whisp'rings of lovers soft murmur those springs, and with
bridal songs birds fill the air.
"Where is Ingeborg now? Is so soon all forgot, for a chief with-
ered, gray-haired, and old?
I, I cannot forget! Gladly gave I my life, yet once more that dear
form to behold!
-
"And three years have gone by since my own land I saw, kingly hall
of fair Saga the Queen!
## p. 14576 (#142) ##########################################
14576
ESAIAS TEGNER
Rise there yet so majestic those mountains to heaven? keeps my
forefathers' dale its bright green?
"On the cairn where my father lies buried, a lime-tree I planted,—
ah! blooms it there now?
Who its tender shoot guards? Give thy moisture, O earth! and thy
dews, O thou heaven, give thou!
"Yet why linger I here, on the wave of the stranger? -Is tribute, is
blood, then my goal?
I have glory sufficient; and beggarly gold and its brightness, deep
scorneth my soul.
"There's the flag on the mast; to the Northland it points, and the
North holds the country I love:
Back to northward I'll steer, and will follow the course of the
breezes fresh-blowing above! "
[In the thirteenth canto, Frithiof in a defiant mood enters the temple of
Balder, seizes the arm-ring, pulls down the image of Balder, and involves the
whole temple in ruin, it being consumed in a blaze of unquenchable fire.
Returning from the sea, Frithiof in disguise visits the court of King Ring,
and sees Ingeborg, who recognizes him through his disguise. King Ring also
divines his secret, but magnanimously allows him to depart in peace.
Frithiof rebuilds the temple in a spirit of sincere repentance.
King Ring has died, and Ingeborg is free.
The last canto is entitled 'The Reconciliation,' and is full of noble senti-
Frithiof has made atonement, resumes his place in the kingdom, and
is united to Ingeborg. ]
ment.
THE RECONCILIATION
F"
INISHED great Balder's temple stood!
Round it no palisade of wood
Ran now as erst:
A railing stronger, fairer than the first,
And all of hammered iron,-each bar
Gold-tipped and regular,-
Walls Balder's sacred house. Like some long line
Of steel-clad champions, whose bright war-spears shine
And golden helms afar, so stood
This glittering guard within the holy wood!
Proud stood it there on mountain steep, its lofty brow
Reflected calmly on the sea's bright-flowing wave.
But round about, some girdle like of beauteous flowers,
## p. 14577 (#143) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14577
Went Balder's dale, with all its groves' soft-murmured sighs,
And all its birds' sweet twittered songs,- the home of peace.
Farthest within, the god's high altar rested,
Hewn all of one sole block
From Northern marble rock;
And round thereon its scroll the serpent twisted,
With solemn rune
Each fold thick strewn,
Whose words from Havamal and Vala taken
Deep thoughts in every human bosom waken,—
While in the wall above
A niche was seen with stars of gold
On dark-blue ground; and there, behold!
All mild and gentle as the silver moon
Sitting heaven's blue aboon,
The silver image stands of Balder, God of Love! —
So seemed the sanctuary. — Forth in pairs now tread
Twelve temple virgins; vests of silver thread
Adorn each slender form, and roses red
O'er ev'ry cheek soft graces shed,
And spread
O'er ev'ry innocent heart a fragrant fair rose-bed. -
Before the White God's image, and around
The late-blessed altar, dancing, light they bound
As spring winds leap where rippling fount waves sound,
As woodland elves that skip along the ground,
Skimming the high-grown grass
Which morning's dew
Still hangs with sparkling gems of every hue;-
Ah! how those jewels tremble as the fairies pass!
And while the dance went round, a holy song they sung
Of Balder, that mild god, and how he was beloved
By every creature, till he fell by Höder's dart,
And earth and ocean wide, and heaven itself, sore wept!
How pure, how tender that song it pealeth!
Sure never sprang
Such tuneful clang
From mortal breast! No, - heaven revealeth
Some tone from Breidablick, from out the gods' own hall,
All soft as lonely maiden's thoughts on him she loves,
What time the quail calls deeply 'mid the peace of night;
The North's tall birches bathed i' th' moon's pale-quivering sheen.
XXV-912
## p. 14578 (#144) ##########################################
14578
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
And Frithiof, leaning on his sword, whose glance
Shines far around, stood lost as in a trance,
And charmed and silent gazed upon the dance! —
Thereat his childhood's memories, how they throng
Before his raptured eye! -A jocund train, and long,
And innocent and glad and true,
With eyes like heaven's own blue,
And heads rich circled by bright-golden tresses,-
His former youth-friend each with some sign addresses;
Then all his Viking life,
With scenes of murderous strife
And bold adventures rife,
Like some dark bloody shadow sinketh
Fast down to night. -Ah! glad he drinketh
Forgetfulness's sweet cup, and thinketh,
"Repose at last those sea-king exploits have,-
I stand a flower-crowned Bauta-Stone upon their grave! "
"Son Frithiof, welcome! Yes, I've long expected
That thou shouldst come; — for force, 'tis true, still wanders
Round land and sea afar, wild Berserk like
That pale with rage the shield's hard border biteth;
But yet at last it home returns again,
Outwearied and all calm. -The strong-armed Thor
Full oft 'gainst giant Jotunheim did wend;
But spite his belt celestial, spite his gauntlets,
Utgårda-Loke still his throne retains;-
Evil, itself a force, to force yields never!
Goodness, not joined with strength, must child's-play be;-
On Ägir's bosom so, the sun shines prettily;
But fickle as the flood the graspless splendor see!
As sink or rise the billows, thus all changeably
The fairy brightness flitteth, moving endlessly.
And force, from goodness severed, surely dies;
Self-eating, self-consumed, as sword that lies
In some damp cairn, black rust corrodes the prize:
Yes! Life's debauch fierce strength's mad riot is!
But ah! Oblivion's heron flutters still
O'er goblet-brim that traitorous sweet draughts fill,
And deep's the wakened drunkard's shame for deeds of ill!
"King Helge is no more! "—
"King Helge, he," said Frithiof,- "when, where, how? »
"Thyself know'st well that whilst thou here hast builded
This temple to the god, King Helge marched
## p. 14579 (#145) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14579
On painful foray 'mong the heathen Fins,
Scaling each mountain wall. In Finland's borders,
Raised on a barren time-worn peak, there stood
An ancient temple consecrate to Jumala:
Abandoned and fast-shut, for many ages
This desolate fane had been, its every rite
Long since forgotten; but above the portal
An old and monstrous idol of the god
Stood, frail-supported, trembling to its fall.
This temple none dared enter, scarce approach;
For down from sire to son an eld tradition
Went dimly warning, that whoever first
The temple visited should Jumala view!
This Helge heard, and in his blind fierce rage,
The pathless wilds trod 'gainst this deity
So hated from of old, all bent on razing
The temple's heathen walls. But when he'd marched
Up where the ruin threatened, lo! all fast
The massy moss-grown door was closed; and, covered
With thick brown rust, the key still sat within it.
Grim Helge then, the door-posts griping hard,
With rude uncivil strain the moldering pillars
Fierce shook, and straightway with tremendous crash
The sculptured image fell, burying beneath it
Valhalla's impious son; and so dread Jumala
His eyes behold. - A messenger in haste
These tidings brought ere yet last night was ended.
-
"Now, only Halfdan sits on Bele's chair.
Thy hand, brave Frithiof, offer him! Revenge
And passion sacrifice to heaven's high gods:
This Balder's shrine demandeth;-I demand, too,
As Balder's highest priest, in token meet
That peace's gentle chief thou hast not mocked
With vain professions and an empty homage. -
Decide, my son! -shall Balder's peace be broken?
If so, in vain thou'st built this fane, the token
Of mild forgiveness, and in vain aged priest hath spoken! "
Over the copper threshold Halfdan now,
With pallid brow
And fearful fitful glance, advanceth slow
Tow'rds yonder tow'ring ever-dreaded foe,
And, silent, at a distance stands.
Then Frithiof, with quick hands,
## p. 14580 (#146) ##########################################
14580
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
The corslet-hater, Angurvadel, from his thigh
Unbuckleth, and his bright shield's golden round
Leaning 'gainst the altar, thus draws nigh;
While his cowed enemy
He thus accosts, with pleasant dignity:-
"Most noble in this strife will he be found
Who first his right hand good
Offers in pledge of peaceful brotherhood! "
Then Halfdan, deeply blushing, doffs with haste
His iron gauntlet, and—with hearty grasp embraced-
Each long, long severed hand
Its friend-foe hails, steadfast as mountain-bases stand!
That aged and awful priest then glad removeth
The curse that rested on the varg I veum,
Frithiof the outlaw; and as the last deep accents
Of reconcilement and of blessing sounded—
Lo! Ing'borg sudden enters, rich adorned
With bridal ornaments, and all enrobed
In gorgeous ermine, and by bright-eyed maidens.
Slow followed, as on heaven's broad canopy
Attending star-trains guard the regent moon!
But the young bride's fair eyes,
Those two blue skies,
Fill quick with tears,
And to her brother's heart she trembling sinketh;-
He, with his sister's fears
Deep-moved, her hand all tenderly in Frithiof's linketh,
His burden soft transferring to that hero's breast,
Its long-tried faith fit place for Ing'borg's rest.
Then, to her heart's first, best beloved, her childhood's friend,
In nuptial band
She gives her lily hand,
As before pardoning Balder's altar both low bend!
## p. 14580 (#147) ##########################################
## p. 14580 (#148) ##########################################
3801
ALFRED TENNYSON.
## p. 14580 (#149) ##########################################
## p. 14580 (#150) ##########################################
## p. 14581 (#151) ##########################################
14581
ALFRED TENNYSON
(1809-1892)
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
LFRED TENNYSON, the most representative English poet of the
nineteenth century, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire,
on August 6th, 1809. His boyhood was passed in his father's
country rectory, in an atmosphere that was full of poetry and music;
and at a very early age he began to try his wings in verse. Some
of his youthful efforts were published in partnership with his elder
brother Charles, in 1826, in a volume entitled 'Poems by Two Broth-
ers. ' Two years later he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and
became a member of an intimate society called "The Apostles," which
included some of the most brilliant young men in England. Among
them was Arthur Henry Hallam, the closest friend of Tennyson. In
1829 he won the chancellor's medal with his poem called Timbuc-
too'; and in the following year he published 'Poems, Chiefly Lyr-
ical,' a slender volume of new and delicate melodies. He left college
without taking his degree, soon after his father's death in 1831, and
gave himself to a poet's life with a clear resolution which never
wavered for sixty years.
His volume of poems published in 1832 marked a distinct growth
in strength and skill. It was but a tiny book; but there was a quality
in it which more than balanced the lack of quantity. 'The Lady of
Shalott,' 'Enone,' 'The Lotos Eaters,' 'The Palace of Art,' and 'A
Dream of Fair Women,' revealed the presence of a true dreamer of
dreams, gifted with the magic which translates visions into music.
'The Miller's Daughter,' 'The May Queen,' and 'New Year's Eve,'
showed the touch of one who felt the charm of English rural scenery
and common life with a sentiment so fresh and pure and deep that
he might soon be able to lay his hand upon the very heart of the
people.
But before this highest potency of the poet's gift could come
to Tennyson, there was need of a baptism of conflict and sorrow, to
purify him from the mere love of art for art's sake, to save him from
sinking into an over-dainty weaver of exquisite verse, and to con-
secrate his genius to the severe and noble service of humanity and
truth. This liberating and uplifting experience was enfolded in the
## p. 14582 (#152) ##########################################
14582
ALFRED TENNYSON
profound grief which fell upon him in Arthur Hallam's sudden death
at Vienna, in 1833. How deeply this irretrievable loss shook the
poet's heart, how closely and how strenuously it forced him to face
the mystery and the meaning of life in lonely spiritual wrestling,
was fully disclosed, after seventeen years, in the famous elegy, 'In
Memoriam. ' But the traces of the conflict and some of its fine results
were seen even earlier, in the two volumes of 'Poems' which appeared
in 1842, as the fruitage of a decade of silence. Ulysses,' 'Morte
d'Arthur,' 'St. Simeon Stylites,' 'Dora,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'A Vision of
Sin,' The Two Voices,' and that immortal lyric, Break, Break,
Break,' were not the work of
<
"An idle singer of an empty day. "
A new soul had entered into his poetry. His Muse had been born
again, from above. He took his place with the master-minstrels who
sing with a full voice out of a full heart, not for a coterie, but for
the age and for the race.
It was the recognition that Tennyson really belonged to this
higher class of poets,— a recognition which at first was confined to a
clear-sighted circle, but spread by degrees to the wider reading pub-
lic, that prepared an expectant audience for his first long poem,
'The Princess,' which appeared in 1847. The subject was the eternal
woman question, treated in the form of an epic, half heroic and half
humorous: the story of a king's daughter who sought to emancipate,
and even to separate, her sex from man, by founding a wonderful
woman's college; but was conquered at last (or at least modified), by
the love of an amorous, chivalrous, dreamy prince, who wooed and
married her. The blank verse in which the tale is told has great
beauty, though it is often too ornate; the conclusion of the poem is
a superb and sonorous tribute to the honor of "das ewig weibliche":
but the little interludes of song which are scattered through the epic
shine as the chief jewels in a setting which is not all of pure gold.
In 1850 the long-delayed and nobly labored elegy on the death of
Hallam was given to the world. It is hardly too much to say that
"In Memoriam' stands out, in present vision, as the most illustrious
poem of the century. Certainly it has been the most frequently
translated, the most widely quoted, and the most deeply loved. It is
far more than a splendid monument to the memory of a friend. It
is an utterance of the imperishable hopes and aspirations of the
human soul passing through the valley of the shadow of death. It is
a unique group of lyrics, finished each one with an exquisite artist's
care, which is only surpassed by the intense and steady passion which
fuses them into a single poem. It is the English classic on the love
of immortality and the immortality of love.
―
## p. 14583 (#153) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14583
In the same year with the appearance of this poem happened the
two most important events of Tennyson's career. He was married in
June to Miss Emily Sellwood, a lady of rare and beautiful endow-
ments, who proved herself, through a long life of unselfish devotion,
the true partner of a poet's existence. And he was appointed in
November to succeed Wordsworth as poet laureate.
His first official poem was the stately 'Ode on the Death of the
'Duke of Wellington,' in 1852. The majestic march of the verse, its
freedom, its organ-toned music, its patriotic vigor, and the lofty
solemnity with which it closes, give it a higher place than can be
claimed for any other poetical production of an English laureate for
a public occasion. The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written in
1854, was a trumpet-note that rang through England and echoed
around the world.
'Maud' was published in 1855. It is a lyrical monodrama, in
which the hero, a sensitive and morbid man, with a hereditary tend-
ency to madness, tells the story of his redemption from misanthropy
and despair by the power of a pure love, unhappy but victorious.
The variety of the metrical forms in this poem, the passionate ten-
derness of the love songs, the beautiful truth of the descriptive pass-
ages, and the intense personality of its spirit, give it a singular
charm, which is felt most deeply perhaps by those who are young
and in love. Tennyson himself said to me, "I think Maud' is one
of my most original poems. "
<
(
In 1859 began the publication of the epical sequence called 'Idylls
of the King'; the largest, and in some respects the most important,
of the works of Tennyson. The first group contained 'Enid,' 'Vivien,'
'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere. ' The second group appeared in 1870, and
consisted of The Coming of Arthur,' The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and
Ettarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur. ' In 1872 Gareth and Lynette'
and 'The Last Tournament' were published; and in 1885 Balin and
Balan' was printed in the volume entitled 'Tiresias and Other Poems. '
The division of 'Enid' into two parts - The Marriage of Geraint'
and 'Geraint and Enid' - makes the epic as it now stands consist
of twelve idylls. Each of these idylls clothes an ancient legend from
the history of King Arthur of Britain, in the richest and most har-
monious of modern blank verse. They are so far independent that
any one of them might stand alone as a complete poem. But there
is a connecting thread running through them all in the threefold
love-story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, though the separate
pearls often hide the string. The underlying motive of the whole.
series is to shadow forth the war of Sense against the Soul. The
idylls are to be interpreted therefore as movements in a symphony,
the theme of which is the rightful royalty of man's spiritual nature,
## p. 14584 (#154) ##########################################
14584
ALFRED TENNYSON
seeking to establish itself in a settled reign of law, and constantly
opposed by the disorderly and disintegrating elements of humanity.
In The Coming of Arthur' it is doubt that threatens the kingdom;
in 'Gareth and Lynette' the conflict is with ambition; in 'The Mar-
riage of Geraint,' with pride; in 'Geraint and Enid,' with jealousy;
in 'Balin and Balan,' with suspicion; in 'Merlin and Vivien,' with
lust; in 'The Holy Grail,' with superstition; until at last the poison
of unlawful love has crept through all the court, and Arthur's Round
Table is dissolved in ruin,- but not without a vision of peace for
the king who has kept his soul unstained, and a dim promise of new
hope for some future age, when he shall return to bloodless victory.
Tennyson has not allowed the ethical purpose of these poems to
confuse their interest or bedim their beauty. They are not in any
sense an allegory. The tales of love and knight-errantry, of tourna-
ment and battle and quest, are vividly told in the true romantic spirit,
lighting up the olden story with the thoughts and feelings of to-day.
There is perhaps a touch of over-elaborateness in the style; but after
all the figures stand out to the full as distinctly as they ought to do
in such a large tapestry. In the finer idylls, like Guinevere' and
'The Passing of Arthur,' the verse moves with a grandeur and dig-
nity, a broad, measured, fluent harmony, unrivaled in England since
the days when Milton's organ voice was stilled.
The rest of Tennyson's poetical work includes his dramas,—
'Queen Mary,' 'Harold,' 'Becket,' The Cup and the Falcon,' and
a few others, and several volumes of miscellaneous poems: Enoch
Arden' (1864), 'The Lover's Tale' (1879), 'Ballads' (1880), 'Tiresias'
(1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After' (1886), 'Demeter' (1889), and
"The Death of Enone,' published posthumously in 1892. The great
age to which his life was prolonged, the unswerving fidelity with
which he devoted himself to the sole pursuit of his chosen art, the
freshness of spirit which made him delight in labor to the very last,
and the fine versatility of mind with which he turned from one field
of production to another,- brought it to pass that both in amount
and in variety of work, Tennyson stands in the front rank of English
poets.
I can think of but two-Shakespeare and Robert Browning —
who produced more.
In 1883 a title of nobility was offered to Tennyson through Mr.
Gladstone. This honor, which he had declined at least once before,
he now accepted; and in January 1884 he was admitted (we can
hardly say elevated) to the peerage,- taking his title, Baron of Ald-
worth and Farringford, from his two country houses, in Sussex and in
the Isle of Wight.
It would be difficult, of course, to characterize the style and esti-
mate the value of such a varied and fertile poet in a brief essay.
## p. 14585 (#155) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14585
But there are certain qualities in the poetry of Tennyson which are
unmistakable and vital.
He
1. His diction is singularly lucid, smooth, and melodious.
avoids sharp and strident effects. Not only in his choice of metres,
but also in his choice of words and cadences, we feel a musical
influence controlling his verse. Sometimes this results in a loss of
force or definiteness. But it makes his poetry, whether in the long
swinging lines of 'Locksley Hall,' or in the brief simple measures of
the shorter songs, eminently readable. Any one who recites it aloud
will find how natural it is to fall, as Tennyson always did, into a
rhythmical tone, almost like chanting. And this close relation of his
poetry to music may be felt also in the quality of subtle suggestive-
ness, of intimate and indefinable charm, which makes his brief lyrics
as perfect as anything of their kind in the world's literature. He
has the power of expressing the vague, delicate, yet potent emotions,
the feelings that belong to the twilight of the heart, when the glow
of love and the shadow of regret are mingled, in melodies of words
as simple and as magical as the chime of far-off bells, or the echoes
of a bugle-call dying among the hills.
2. He has an extraordinary truthfulness and delicacy of touch
in natural description. This appears equally in minute, pre-Raphaelite
work, where he speaks of the color of the buds on different trees in
early spring; or of the way in which a wave-crest is reflected in the
smooth hollow before it breaks; and in wide, vague landscapes, where
he renders the turbulence of the coming storm or the still glory of
an autumnal morning in a few broad lines. Add to this the quality
of blending and interfusing all his epithets and descriptions with
the sentiment of the poem, so that they do not distract the feeling
but enhance and deepen it, and you have one of the traits by which
the poetry of Tennyson is most easily distinguished.
3. His range of imaginative sympathy, as shown in his ballads
and character pieces, is very wide; but it moves for the most part
along natural and normal rather than strange and eccentric lines.
His dramatic lyrics differ in this respect from those of Browning.
Tennyson expresses the feeling of the philosopher in Lucretius,'
of the peasant in 'Rizpah,' of the child in 'The Children's Hospital,'
of the old sea-fighter in 'The Revenge,' of the intellectual advent-
urer in Ulysses,' in order to bring out in each, not that which is
exceptional and rare, but that which is most deeply human and typ-
ical.
4. His work reflects with singular fidelity the scientific and social
movements of the age. The discoveries and inventions of modern
times are translated into poetic language, and turned to poetic use.
In his verse the earth moves, the planets are molded of star-dust,
## p. 14586 (#156) ##########################################
14586
ALFRED TENNYSON
and the mystery of an unfinished creation is still in evolution. It is
possible, often, to assign dates to his poems by an allusion to some
newly seen moon or comet, or some critical event in the social his-
tory of mankind. It is true that he mistrusts many of the new
devices to bring in the millennium. He takes a dark view of some
of the elements of nineteenth-century civilization. But still he feels
the forward movement of the world; and his poetry mirrors truly the
spirit of modern optimism, with shadows.
5.
As in its form, so in its spirit, the verse of Tennyson expresses
a constant and controlling sense of law and order. He is in the
opposite camp from the poets of revolt. Harmony is essential to his
conception of beauty. His patriotism is sober, steadfast, thoughtful,
law-abiding. His love moves within the bounds of order, purity, and
reverence. His conception of power is never akin to blind force, but
carries within itself the higher elements of intelligence and voluntary
restraint.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,—
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. »
6. The poetry of Tennyson is pervaded by a profoundly religious
spirit. His view of the world - his view even of the smallest flower
that blossoms in the world -is illuminated through and through by
his faith in the Divine presence and goodness and beauty. He can-
not conceive of a purely physical universe. Nothing that he has
written could have been written as it is, if he had been an atheist
or an agnostic. Even his poems of doubt and conflict are the resur-
gent protests of the heart against the cold negations which destroy
personal trust in the unseen God, in whom we live and move and
have our being. His method in dealing with religious subjects
not theological, like that of Milton or Wordsworth; nor philosophical,
like that of Browning or Arnold or Clough. Tennyson speaks more
from the side of the feelings, the ultimate spiritual instincts and crav-
ings of humanity. The strongest of these is the desire and hope of
a life beyond the grave. To this passion for immortality he gives
full play, and it evokes some of the strongest and sweetest tones of
his music. From The Deserted House' to 'Crossing the Bar,' his
poetry is an evidence of his conviction that death cannot end all. This
faith in the life that is to come elevates and purifies his conception
of the life that now is. It gives a new meaning to duty and to love.
And when we think of the many noble poems in which it has found
expression,- 'The Two Voices,' 'The May Queen,' 'Locksley Hall,'
'Enoch Arden,' 'The Leper's Bride,' 'Guinevere,' 'In Memoriam,'
'Vastness,' 'Wages,' we may well call Tennyson the poet of the
endless life.
## p. 14587 (#157) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14587
His influence upon the thought and feeling of the age has been
far-reaching and potent. He has stood among the doubts and confus-
ions of these latter days, as a witness for the things that are invisi-
ble and eternal,- the things that men may forget if they will, but if
they forget them, their hearts wither and the springs of poesy run
dry. His verse has brought new cheer and courage to the youth of
to-day who would fain defend their spiritual heritage against the in-
vasions of materialism. In the vital conflict for the enlargement of
faith to embrace the real results of science, he stood forth as a leader.
In the great silent reaction of our age from the desperate solitude
of a consistent skepticism, his voice was a clear-toned bell, calling
the unwilling exiles of belief to turn again. And when at last, on
the 6th of October 1892, he passed away from his quiet home at Ald-
worth, with the moonlight falling on closed eyes and voiceless lips,
the world mourned for him as for a mighty prophet, and rejoiced for
him as a poet who had finished his course and kept the faith.
Henry randyke
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
ON
PART I
N EITHER Side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot:
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers.
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14588 (#158) ##########################################
14588
ALFRED TENNYSON
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? .
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott. "
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
## p. 14589 (#159) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14589
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two; –
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
-
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights:
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves;
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric slung,
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot:
## p. 14590 (#160) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14590
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror;
«Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room;
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side:
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse,
Like some bold seër in a trance
Seeing all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14591 (#161) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14591
Lying robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-
The leaves upon her falling light-
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape, she floated by
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name.
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot :
But Lancelot mused a little space:
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott. "
## p. 14592 (#162) ##########################################
14592
ALFRED TENNYSON
CHORIC SONG
From The Lotos-Eaters>
I
TH
HERE is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm! "
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
## p. 14593 (#163) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14593
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place;
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone.
Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
XXV-913
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death; dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,-
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
## p. 14594 (#164) ##########################################
14594
ALFRED TENNYSON
And their. warm tears; but all hath suffered change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold;
Our sons inherit us; our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd vine -
To watch the emerald-colored water falling
Through many a woven acanthus wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak;
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone,
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething
free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
## p. 14595 (#165) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14595
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind:
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and pray-
ing hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong,—
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered-down in
hell
Suffer endless anguish; others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ULYSSES
T LITTLE profits that, an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name:
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known,- cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
## p. 14596 (#166) ##########################################
14596
ALFRED TENNYSON
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence,-something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle:
Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,— you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil:
Death closes all; but something, ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
## p. 14597 (#167) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14597
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven-that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
LOCKSLEY HALL
C
OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn;
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-
horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,-
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. —
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so
young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
## p. 14598 (#168) ##########################################
14598
ALFRED TENNYSON
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me:
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee. "
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
-
And she turned her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs-
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes -
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin? " weeping, "I have loved thee
long. "
Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
Oh the dreary, dreary moorland! Oh the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy? —having known me, to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day;
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with
wine.
Go to him-it is thy duty: kiss him; take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
H
## p. 14599 (#169) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14599
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand –
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand!
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!
Well-'tis well that I should bluster! - Hadst thou less unworthy
proved-
Would to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.
Never, though my mortal summers to such length of years should
come
As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. —
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.
## p. 14600 (#170) ##########################################
14600
ALFRED TENNYSON
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
Oh, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due
Half is thine and half is his; it will be worthy of the two.
Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not ex-
empt-
Truly, she herself had suffered-» Perish in thy self-contempt!
Overlive it lower yet - be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
them, who Vikinga comrade would rest! "
## p. 14575 (#141) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14575
Thus his laws carved he out, and fresh exploits each day and fresh
fame to strange coast-lands he brought;
And his like found he none on the blue-rolling sea, and his cham-
pions right willing they fought.
But himself sat all darkly, with rudder in hand, and looked down on
the slow-rocking spray;-
"Deep thou art! Peace perchance in those depths still may bloom,
but above here all peace dies away.
"Is the White God aged? Let him take his good sword,-I will
fall should it so be decreed:
But he sits in yon sky, gloomy thoughts sending down; ne'er my
soul from their sadness is freed! "
Yet when battle is near, like the fresh eagle flying, his spirit fierce
soars with delight;
Loudly thunders his voice, and with clear brow he stands, like the
lightener still foremost in fight.
Thus from vict'ry to vict'ry he ceaselessly swam, on that wide-
foaming grave all secure;
And fresh islands he saw, and fresh bays in the south, till fair winds
on to Greek-Land allure.
When its groves he beheld, in the green tide reflected, its temples
in ruin bent low,-
Freja knows what he thought, and the scald; and if e'er thou hast
known how to love-thou wilt know!
"Here our dwelling had been! Here's the isle, here's the land: of
this temple my sire oft would tell;
Hither 'twas, hither 'twas, I invited my maid; -ah! she, cruel, the
North loved too well!
"Mong these happy green vales dwells not peace? and remembrance,
ah! haunts she not columns so fair?
Like the whisp'rings of lovers soft murmur those springs, and with
bridal songs birds fill the air.
"Where is Ingeborg now? Is so soon all forgot, for a chief with-
ered, gray-haired, and old?
I, I cannot forget! Gladly gave I my life, yet once more that dear
form to behold!
-
"And three years have gone by since my own land I saw, kingly hall
of fair Saga the Queen!
## p. 14576 (#142) ##########################################
14576
ESAIAS TEGNER
Rise there yet so majestic those mountains to heaven? keeps my
forefathers' dale its bright green?
"On the cairn where my father lies buried, a lime-tree I planted,—
ah! blooms it there now?
Who its tender shoot guards? Give thy moisture, O earth! and thy
dews, O thou heaven, give thou!
"Yet why linger I here, on the wave of the stranger? -Is tribute, is
blood, then my goal?
I have glory sufficient; and beggarly gold and its brightness, deep
scorneth my soul.
"There's the flag on the mast; to the Northland it points, and the
North holds the country I love:
Back to northward I'll steer, and will follow the course of the
breezes fresh-blowing above! "
[In the thirteenth canto, Frithiof in a defiant mood enters the temple of
Balder, seizes the arm-ring, pulls down the image of Balder, and involves the
whole temple in ruin, it being consumed in a blaze of unquenchable fire.
Returning from the sea, Frithiof in disguise visits the court of King Ring,
and sees Ingeborg, who recognizes him through his disguise. King Ring also
divines his secret, but magnanimously allows him to depart in peace.
Frithiof rebuilds the temple in a spirit of sincere repentance.
King Ring has died, and Ingeborg is free.
The last canto is entitled 'The Reconciliation,' and is full of noble senti-
Frithiof has made atonement, resumes his place in the kingdom, and
is united to Ingeborg. ]
ment.
THE RECONCILIATION
F"
INISHED great Balder's temple stood!
Round it no palisade of wood
Ran now as erst:
A railing stronger, fairer than the first,
And all of hammered iron,-each bar
Gold-tipped and regular,-
Walls Balder's sacred house. Like some long line
Of steel-clad champions, whose bright war-spears shine
And golden helms afar, so stood
This glittering guard within the holy wood!
Proud stood it there on mountain steep, its lofty brow
Reflected calmly on the sea's bright-flowing wave.
But round about, some girdle like of beauteous flowers,
## p. 14577 (#143) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14577
Went Balder's dale, with all its groves' soft-murmured sighs,
And all its birds' sweet twittered songs,- the home of peace.
Farthest within, the god's high altar rested,
Hewn all of one sole block
From Northern marble rock;
And round thereon its scroll the serpent twisted,
With solemn rune
Each fold thick strewn,
Whose words from Havamal and Vala taken
Deep thoughts in every human bosom waken,—
While in the wall above
A niche was seen with stars of gold
On dark-blue ground; and there, behold!
All mild and gentle as the silver moon
Sitting heaven's blue aboon,
The silver image stands of Balder, God of Love! —
So seemed the sanctuary. — Forth in pairs now tread
Twelve temple virgins; vests of silver thread
Adorn each slender form, and roses red
O'er ev'ry cheek soft graces shed,
And spread
O'er ev'ry innocent heart a fragrant fair rose-bed. -
Before the White God's image, and around
The late-blessed altar, dancing, light they bound
As spring winds leap where rippling fount waves sound,
As woodland elves that skip along the ground,
Skimming the high-grown grass
Which morning's dew
Still hangs with sparkling gems of every hue;-
Ah! how those jewels tremble as the fairies pass!
And while the dance went round, a holy song they sung
Of Balder, that mild god, and how he was beloved
By every creature, till he fell by Höder's dart,
And earth and ocean wide, and heaven itself, sore wept!
How pure, how tender that song it pealeth!
Sure never sprang
Such tuneful clang
From mortal breast! No, - heaven revealeth
Some tone from Breidablick, from out the gods' own hall,
All soft as lonely maiden's thoughts on him she loves,
What time the quail calls deeply 'mid the peace of night;
The North's tall birches bathed i' th' moon's pale-quivering sheen.
XXV-912
## p. 14578 (#144) ##########################################
14578
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
And Frithiof, leaning on his sword, whose glance
Shines far around, stood lost as in a trance,
And charmed and silent gazed upon the dance! —
Thereat his childhood's memories, how they throng
Before his raptured eye! -A jocund train, and long,
And innocent and glad and true,
With eyes like heaven's own blue,
And heads rich circled by bright-golden tresses,-
His former youth-friend each with some sign addresses;
Then all his Viking life,
With scenes of murderous strife
And bold adventures rife,
Like some dark bloody shadow sinketh
Fast down to night. -Ah! glad he drinketh
Forgetfulness's sweet cup, and thinketh,
"Repose at last those sea-king exploits have,-
I stand a flower-crowned Bauta-Stone upon their grave! "
"Son Frithiof, welcome! Yes, I've long expected
That thou shouldst come; — for force, 'tis true, still wanders
Round land and sea afar, wild Berserk like
That pale with rage the shield's hard border biteth;
But yet at last it home returns again,
Outwearied and all calm. -The strong-armed Thor
Full oft 'gainst giant Jotunheim did wend;
But spite his belt celestial, spite his gauntlets,
Utgårda-Loke still his throne retains;-
Evil, itself a force, to force yields never!
Goodness, not joined with strength, must child's-play be;-
On Ägir's bosom so, the sun shines prettily;
But fickle as the flood the graspless splendor see!
As sink or rise the billows, thus all changeably
The fairy brightness flitteth, moving endlessly.
And force, from goodness severed, surely dies;
Self-eating, self-consumed, as sword that lies
In some damp cairn, black rust corrodes the prize:
Yes! Life's debauch fierce strength's mad riot is!
But ah! Oblivion's heron flutters still
O'er goblet-brim that traitorous sweet draughts fill,
And deep's the wakened drunkard's shame for deeds of ill!
"King Helge is no more! "—
"King Helge, he," said Frithiof,- "when, where, how? »
"Thyself know'st well that whilst thou here hast builded
This temple to the god, King Helge marched
## p. 14579 (#145) ##########################################
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
14579
On painful foray 'mong the heathen Fins,
Scaling each mountain wall. In Finland's borders,
Raised on a barren time-worn peak, there stood
An ancient temple consecrate to Jumala:
Abandoned and fast-shut, for many ages
This desolate fane had been, its every rite
Long since forgotten; but above the portal
An old and monstrous idol of the god
Stood, frail-supported, trembling to its fall.
This temple none dared enter, scarce approach;
For down from sire to son an eld tradition
Went dimly warning, that whoever first
The temple visited should Jumala view!
This Helge heard, and in his blind fierce rage,
The pathless wilds trod 'gainst this deity
So hated from of old, all bent on razing
The temple's heathen walls. But when he'd marched
Up where the ruin threatened, lo! all fast
The massy moss-grown door was closed; and, covered
With thick brown rust, the key still sat within it.
Grim Helge then, the door-posts griping hard,
With rude uncivil strain the moldering pillars
Fierce shook, and straightway with tremendous crash
The sculptured image fell, burying beneath it
Valhalla's impious son; and so dread Jumala
His eyes behold. - A messenger in haste
These tidings brought ere yet last night was ended.
-
"Now, only Halfdan sits on Bele's chair.
Thy hand, brave Frithiof, offer him! Revenge
And passion sacrifice to heaven's high gods:
This Balder's shrine demandeth;-I demand, too,
As Balder's highest priest, in token meet
That peace's gentle chief thou hast not mocked
With vain professions and an empty homage. -
Decide, my son! -shall Balder's peace be broken?
If so, in vain thou'st built this fane, the token
Of mild forgiveness, and in vain aged priest hath spoken! "
Over the copper threshold Halfdan now,
With pallid brow
And fearful fitful glance, advanceth slow
Tow'rds yonder tow'ring ever-dreaded foe,
And, silent, at a distance stands.
Then Frithiof, with quick hands,
## p. 14580 (#146) ##########################################
14580
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
The corslet-hater, Angurvadel, from his thigh
Unbuckleth, and his bright shield's golden round
Leaning 'gainst the altar, thus draws nigh;
While his cowed enemy
He thus accosts, with pleasant dignity:-
"Most noble in this strife will he be found
Who first his right hand good
Offers in pledge of peaceful brotherhood! "
Then Halfdan, deeply blushing, doffs with haste
His iron gauntlet, and—with hearty grasp embraced-
Each long, long severed hand
Its friend-foe hails, steadfast as mountain-bases stand!
That aged and awful priest then glad removeth
The curse that rested on the varg I veum,
Frithiof the outlaw; and as the last deep accents
Of reconcilement and of blessing sounded—
Lo! Ing'borg sudden enters, rich adorned
With bridal ornaments, and all enrobed
In gorgeous ermine, and by bright-eyed maidens.
Slow followed, as on heaven's broad canopy
Attending star-trains guard the regent moon!
But the young bride's fair eyes,
Those two blue skies,
Fill quick with tears,
And to her brother's heart she trembling sinketh;-
He, with his sister's fears
Deep-moved, her hand all tenderly in Frithiof's linketh,
His burden soft transferring to that hero's breast,
Its long-tried faith fit place for Ing'borg's rest.
Then, to her heart's first, best beloved, her childhood's friend,
In nuptial band
She gives her lily hand,
As before pardoning Balder's altar both low bend!
## p. 14580 (#147) ##########################################
## p. 14580 (#148) ##########################################
3801
ALFRED TENNYSON.
## p. 14580 (#149) ##########################################
## p. 14580 (#150) ##########################################
## p. 14581 (#151) ##########################################
14581
ALFRED TENNYSON
(1809-1892)
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
LFRED TENNYSON, the most representative English poet of the
nineteenth century, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire,
on August 6th, 1809. His boyhood was passed in his father's
country rectory, in an atmosphere that was full of poetry and music;
and at a very early age he began to try his wings in verse. Some
of his youthful efforts were published in partnership with his elder
brother Charles, in 1826, in a volume entitled 'Poems by Two Broth-
ers. ' Two years later he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and
became a member of an intimate society called "The Apostles," which
included some of the most brilliant young men in England. Among
them was Arthur Henry Hallam, the closest friend of Tennyson. In
1829 he won the chancellor's medal with his poem called Timbuc-
too'; and in the following year he published 'Poems, Chiefly Lyr-
ical,' a slender volume of new and delicate melodies. He left college
without taking his degree, soon after his father's death in 1831, and
gave himself to a poet's life with a clear resolution which never
wavered for sixty years.
His volume of poems published in 1832 marked a distinct growth
in strength and skill. It was but a tiny book; but there was a quality
in it which more than balanced the lack of quantity. 'The Lady of
Shalott,' 'Enone,' 'The Lotos Eaters,' 'The Palace of Art,' and 'A
Dream of Fair Women,' revealed the presence of a true dreamer of
dreams, gifted with the magic which translates visions into music.
'The Miller's Daughter,' 'The May Queen,' and 'New Year's Eve,'
showed the touch of one who felt the charm of English rural scenery
and common life with a sentiment so fresh and pure and deep that
he might soon be able to lay his hand upon the very heart of the
people.
But before this highest potency of the poet's gift could come
to Tennyson, there was need of a baptism of conflict and sorrow, to
purify him from the mere love of art for art's sake, to save him from
sinking into an over-dainty weaver of exquisite verse, and to con-
secrate his genius to the severe and noble service of humanity and
truth. This liberating and uplifting experience was enfolded in the
## p. 14582 (#152) ##########################################
14582
ALFRED TENNYSON
profound grief which fell upon him in Arthur Hallam's sudden death
at Vienna, in 1833. How deeply this irretrievable loss shook the
poet's heart, how closely and how strenuously it forced him to face
the mystery and the meaning of life in lonely spiritual wrestling,
was fully disclosed, after seventeen years, in the famous elegy, 'In
Memoriam. ' But the traces of the conflict and some of its fine results
were seen even earlier, in the two volumes of 'Poems' which appeared
in 1842, as the fruitage of a decade of silence. Ulysses,' 'Morte
d'Arthur,' 'St. Simeon Stylites,' 'Dora,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'A Vision of
Sin,' The Two Voices,' and that immortal lyric, Break, Break,
Break,' were not the work of
<
"An idle singer of an empty day. "
A new soul had entered into his poetry. His Muse had been born
again, from above. He took his place with the master-minstrels who
sing with a full voice out of a full heart, not for a coterie, but for
the age and for the race.
It was the recognition that Tennyson really belonged to this
higher class of poets,— a recognition which at first was confined to a
clear-sighted circle, but spread by degrees to the wider reading pub-
lic, that prepared an expectant audience for his first long poem,
'The Princess,' which appeared in 1847. The subject was the eternal
woman question, treated in the form of an epic, half heroic and half
humorous: the story of a king's daughter who sought to emancipate,
and even to separate, her sex from man, by founding a wonderful
woman's college; but was conquered at last (or at least modified), by
the love of an amorous, chivalrous, dreamy prince, who wooed and
married her. The blank verse in which the tale is told has great
beauty, though it is often too ornate; the conclusion of the poem is
a superb and sonorous tribute to the honor of "das ewig weibliche":
but the little interludes of song which are scattered through the epic
shine as the chief jewels in a setting which is not all of pure gold.
In 1850 the long-delayed and nobly labored elegy on the death of
Hallam was given to the world. It is hardly too much to say that
"In Memoriam' stands out, in present vision, as the most illustrious
poem of the century. Certainly it has been the most frequently
translated, the most widely quoted, and the most deeply loved. It is
far more than a splendid monument to the memory of a friend. It
is an utterance of the imperishable hopes and aspirations of the
human soul passing through the valley of the shadow of death. It is
a unique group of lyrics, finished each one with an exquisite artist's
care, which is only surpassed by the intense and steady passion which
fuses them into a single poem. It is the English classic on the love
of immortality and the immortality of love.
―
## p. 14583 (#153) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14583
In the same year with the appearance of this poem happened the
two most important events of Tennyson's career. He was married in
June to Miss Emily Sellwood, a lady of rare and beautiful endow-
ments, who proved herself, through a long life of unselfish devotion,
the true partner of a poet's existence. And he was appointed in
November to succeed Wordsworth as poet laureate.
His first official poem was the stately 'Ode on the Death of the
'Duke of Wellington,' in 1852. The majestic march of the verse, its
freedom, its organ-toned music, its patriotic vigor, and the lofty
solemnity with which it closes, give it a higher place than can be
claimed for any other poetical production of an English laureate for
a public occasion. The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written in
1854, was a trumpet-note that rang through England and echoed
around the world.
'Maud' was published in 1855. It is a lyrical monodrama, in
which the hero, a sensitive and morbid man, with a hereditary tend-
ency to madness, tells the story of his redemption from misanthropy
and despair by the power of a pure love, unhappy but victorious.
The variety of the metrical forms in this poem, the passionate ten-
derness of the love songs, the beautiful truth of the descriptive pass-
ages, and the intense personality of its spirit, give it a singular
charm, which is felt most deeply perhaps by those who are young
and in love. Tennyson himself said to me, "I think Maud' is one
of my most original poems. "
<
(
In 1859 began the publication of the epical sequence called 'Idylls
of the King'; the largest, and in some respects the most important,
of the works of Tennyson. The first group contained 'Enid,' 'Vivien,'
'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere. ' The second group appeared in 1870, and
consisted of The Coming of Arthur,' The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and
Ettarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur. ' In 1872 Gareth and Lynette'
and 'The Last Tournament' were published; and in 1885 Balin and
Balan' was printed in the volume entitled 'Tiresias and Other Poems. '
The division of 'Enid' into two parts - The Marriage of Geraint'
and 'Geraint and Enid' - makes the epic as it now stands consist
of twelve idylls. Each of these idylls clothes an ancient legend from
the history of King Arthur of Britain, in the richest and most har-
monious of modern blank verse. They are so far independent that
any one of them might stand alone as a complete poem. But there
is a connecting thread running through them all in the threefold
love-story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, though the separate
pearls often hide the string. The underlying motive of the whole.
series is to shadow forth the war of Sense against the Soul. The
idylls are to be interpreted therefore as movements in a symphony,
the theme of which is the rightful royalty of man's spiritual nature,
## p. 14584 (#154) ##########################################
14584
ALFRED TENNYSON
seeking to establish itself in a settled reign of law, and constantly
opposed by the disorderly and disintegrating elements of humanity.
In The Coming of Arthur' it is doubt that threatens the kingdom;
in 'Gareth and Lynette' the conflict is with ambition; in 'The Mar-
riage of Geraint,' with pride; in 'Geraint and Enid,' with jealousy;
in 'Balin and Balan,' with suspicion; in 'Merlin and Vivien,' with
lust; in 'The Holy Grail,' with superstition; until at last the poison
of unlawful love has crept through all the court, and Arthur's Round
Table is dissolved in ruin,- but not without a vision of peace for
the king who has kept his soul unstained, and a dim promise of new
hope for some future age, when he shall return to bloodless victory.
Tennyson has not allowed the ethical purpose of these poems to
confuse their interest or bedim their beauty. They are not in any
sense an allegory. The tales of love and knight-errantry, of tourna-
ment and battle and quest, are vividly told in the true romantic spirit,
lighting up the olden story with the thoughts and feelings of to-day.
There is perhaps a touch of over-elaborateness in the style; but after
all the figures stand out to the full as distinctly as they ought to do
in such a large tapestry. In the finer idylls, like Guinevere' and
'The Passing of Arthur,' the verse moves with a grandeur and dig-
nity, a broad, measured, fluent harmony, unrivaled in England since
the days when Milton's organ voice was stilled.
The rest of Tennyson's poetical work includes his dramas,—
'Queen Mary,' 'Harold,' 'Becket,' The Cup and the Falcon,' and
a few others, and several volumes of miscellaneous poems: Enoch
Arden' (1864), 'The Lover's Tale' (1879), 'Ballads' (1880), 'Tiresias'
(1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After' (1886), 'Demeter' (1889), and
"The Death of Enone,' published posthumously in 1892. The great
age to which his life was prolonged, the unswerving fidelity with
which he devoted himself to the sole pursuit of his chosen art, the
freshness of spirit which made him delight in labor to the very last,
and the fine versatility of mind with which he turned from one field
of production to another,- brought it to pass that both in amount
and in variety of work, Tennyson stands in the front rank of English
poets.
I can think of but two-Shakespeare and Robert Browning —
who produced more.
In 1883 a title of nobility was offered to Tennyson through Mr.
Gladstone. This honor, which he had declined at least once before,
he now accepted; and in January 1884 he was admitted (we can
hardly say elevated) to the peerage,- taking his title, Baron of Ald-
worth and Farringford, from his two country houses, in Sussex and in
the Isle of Wight.
It would be difficult, of course, to characterize the style and esti-
mate the value of such a varied and fertile poet in a brief essay.
## p. 14585 (#155) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14585
But there are certain qualities in the poetry of Tennyson which are
unmistakable and vital.
He
1. His diction is singularly lucid, smooth, and melodious.
avoids sharp and strident effects. Not only in his choice of metres,
but also in his choice of words and cadences, we feel a musical
influence controlling his verse. Sometimes this results in a loss of
force or definiteness. But it makes his poetry, whether in the long
swinging lines of 'Locksley Hall,' or in the brief simple measures of
the shorter songs, eminently readable. Any one who recites it aloud
will find how natural it is to fall, as Tennyson always did, into a
rhythmical tone, almost like chanting. And this close relation of his
poetry to music may be felt also in the quality of subtle suggestive-
ness, of intimate and indefinable charm, which makes his brief lyrics
as perfect as anything of their kind in the world's literature. He
has the power of expressing the vague, delicate, yet potent emotions,
the feelings that belong to the twilight of the heart, when the glow
of love and the shadow of regret are mingled, in melodies of words
as simple and as magical as the chime of far-off bells, or the echoes
of a bugle-call dying among the hills.
2. He has an extraordinary truthfulness and delicacy of touch
in natural description. This appears equally in minute, pre-Raphaelite
work, where he speaks of the color of the buds on different trees in
early spring; or of the way in which a wave-crest is reflected in the
smooth hollow before it breaks; and in wide, vague landscapes, where
he renders the turbulence of the coming storm or the still glory of
an autumnal morning in a few broad lines. Add to this the quality
of blending and interfusing all his epithets and descriptions with
the sentiment of the poem, so that they do not distract the feeling
but enhance and deepen it, and you have one of the traits by which
the poetry of Tennyson is most easily distinguished.
3. His range of imaginative sympathy, as shown in his ballads
and character pieces, is very wide; but it moves for the most part
along natural and normal rather than strange and eccentric lines.
His dramatic lyrics differ in this respect from those of Browning.
Tennyson expresses the feeling of the philosopher in Lucretius,'
of the peasant in 'Rizpah,' of the child in 'The Children's Hospital,'
of the old sea-fighter in 'The Revenge,' of the intellectual advent-
urer in Ulysses,' in order to bring out in each, not that which is
exceptional and rare, but that which is most deeply human and typ-
ical.
4. His work reflects with singular fidelity the scientific and social
movements of the age. The discoveries and inventions of modern
times are translated into poetic language, and turned to poetic use.
In his verse the earth moves, the planets are molded of star-dust,
## p. 14586 (#156) ##########################################
14586
ALFRED TENNYSON
and the mystery of an unfinished creation is still in evolution. It is
possible, often, to assign dates to his poems by an allusion to some
newly seen moon or comet, or some critical event in the social his-
tory of mankind. It is true that he mistrusts many of the new
devices to bring in the millennium. He takes a dark view of some
of the elements of nineteenth-century civilization. But still he feels
the forward movement of the world; and his poetry mirrors truly the
spirit of modern optimism, with shadows.
5.
As in its form, so in its spirit, the verse of Tennyson expresses
a constant and controlling sense of law and order. He is in the
opposite camp from the poets of revolt. Harmony is essential to his
conception of beauty. His patriotism is sober, steadfast, thoughtful,
law-abiding. His love moves within the bounds of order, purity, and
reverence. His conception of power is never akin to blind force, but
carries within itself the higher elements of intelligence and voluntary
restraint.
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,—
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. »
6. The poetry of Tennyson is pervaded by a profoundly religious
spirit. His view of the world - his view even of the smallest flower
that blossoms in the world -is illuminated through and through by
his faith in the Divine presence and goodness and beauty. He can-
not conceive of a purely physical universe. Nothing that he has
written could have been written as it is, if he had been an atheist
or an agnostic. Even his poems of doubt and conflict are the resur-
gent protests of the heart against the cold negations which destroy
personal trust in the unseen God, in whom we live and move and
have our being. His method in dealing with religious subjects
not theological, like that of Milton or Wordsworth; nor philosophical,
like that of Browning or Arnold or Clough. Tennyson speaks more
from the side of the feelings, the ultimate spiritual instincts and crav-
ings of humanity. The strongest of these is the desire and hope of
a life beyond the grave. To this passion for immortality he gives
full play, and it evokes some of the strongest and sweetest tones of
his music. From The Deserted House' to 'Crossing the Bar,' his
poetry is an evidence of his conviction that death cannot end all. This
faith in the life that is to come elevates and purifies his conception
of the life that now is. It gives a new meaning to duty and to love.
And when we think of the many noble poems in which it has found
expression,- 'The Two Voices,' 'The May Queen,' 'Locksley Hall,'
'Enoch Arden,' 'The Leper's Bride,' 'Guinevere,' 'In Memoriam,'
'Vastness,' 'Wages,' we may well call Tennyson the poet of the
endless life.
## p. 14587 (#157) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14587
His influence upon the thought and feeling of the age has been
far-reaching and potent. He has stood among the doubts and confus-
ions of these latter days, as a witness for the things that are invisi-
ble and eternal,- the things that men may forget if they will, but if
they forget them, their hearts wither and the springs of poesy run
dry. His verse has brought new cheer and courage to the youth of
to-day who would fain defend their spiritual heritage against the in-
vasions of materialism. In the vital conflict for the enlargement of
faith to embrace the real results of science, he stood forth as a leader.
In the great silent reaction of our age from the desperate solitude
of a consistent skepticism, his voice was a clear-toned bell, calling
the unwilling exiles of belief to turn again. And when at last, on
the 6th of October 1892, he passed away from his quiet home at Ald-
worth, with the moonlight falling on closed eyes and voiceless lips,
the world mourned for him as for a mighty prophet, and rejoiced for
him as a poet who had finished his course and kept the faith.
Henry randyke
THE LADY OF SHALOTT
ON
PART I
N EITHER Side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot:
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers.
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle embowers
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14588 (#158) ##########################################
14588
ALFRED TENNYSON
By the margin, willow-veiled,
Slide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses; and unhailed
The shallop flitteth silken-sailed
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? .
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott. "
PART II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
## p. 14589 (#159) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14589
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Goes by towered Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two; –
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
-
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights:
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bowshot from her bower eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves;
The sun came dazzling through the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glittered free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot;
And from his blazoned baldric slung,
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jeweled shone the saddle leather;
The helmet and the helmet feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot:
## p. 14590 (#160) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14590
As often through the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed;
On burnished hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror;
«Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room;
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side:
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over towered Camelot:
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river's dim expanse,
Like some bold seër in a trance
Seeing all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
## p. 14591 (#161) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14591
Lying robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right-
The leaves upon her falling light-
Through the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot;
And as the boat-head wound along,
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape, she floated by
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name.
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot :
But Lancelot mused a little space:
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott. "
## p. 14592 (#162) ##########################################
14592
ALFRED TENNYSON
CHORIC SONG
From The Lotos-Eaters>
I
TH
HERE is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone,
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
"There is no joy but calm! "
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
## p. 14593 (#163) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14593
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place;
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone.
Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
XXV-913
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death; dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heaped over with a mound of grass,-
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
## p. 14594 (#164) ##########################################
14594
ALFRED TENNYSON
And their. warm tears; but all hath suffered change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold;
Our sons inherit us; our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile :
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath,
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave through the thick-twinèd vine -
To watch the emerald-colored water falling
Through many a woven acanthus wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretched out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak;
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Through every hollow cave and alley lone,
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we,
Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething
free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
## p. 14595 (#165) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14595
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind:
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and pray-
ing hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong,—
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whispered-down in
hell
Suffer endless anguish; others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
ULYSSES
T LITTLE profits that, an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name:
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known,- cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
## p. 14596 (#166) ##########################################
14596
ALFRED TENNYSON
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence,-something more,
A bringer of new things: and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle:
Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,— you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil:
Death closes all; but something, ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
## p. 14597 (#167) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14597
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven-that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
LOCKSLEY HALL
C
OMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn;
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-
horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,-
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. —
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so
young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
## p. 14598 (#168) ##########################################
14598
ALFRED TENNYSON
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me:
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee. "
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
-
And she turned her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs-
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes -
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin? " weeping, "I have loved thee
long. "
Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands:
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
Oh the dreary, dreary moorland! Oh the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy? —having known me, to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day;
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with
wine.
Go to him-it is thy duty: kiss him; take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
H
## p. 14599 (#169) ##########################################
ALFRED TENNYSON
14599
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand –
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand!
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!
Well-'tis well that I should bluster! - Hadst thou less unworthy
proved-
Would to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.
Never, though my mortal summers to such length of years should
come
As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move:
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.
Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. —
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.
## p. 14600 (#170) ##########################################
14600
ALFRED TENNYSON
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
Oh, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due
Half is thine and half is his; it will be worthy of the two.
Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not ex-
empt-
Truly, she herself had suffered-» Perish in thy self-contempt!
Overlive it lower yet - be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
