THE PAPYRUS SERIES Suppressed Poems o/* Alfred Lord Tennyson Three hundred Copies Off-printed from the ^^Avon Booklet^' Suppressed Poems OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 1830-1862 Including the Prize Poem " Timbuctoo " and the original {iS^'^) Version of ''The Lover's Tale'' EDITED BY J. C. THOMSON Editor of Bibliography of Charles Dickens,** etc. Warwick J. THOMSON, Avon Glen New York : Harper and Brothers 1904 FOREWORD In the folloiving pages are gi'ven^ ivith afeiu insignificant exceptions, all the poems atone time deemed by Tennyson ivorthy of publication, and afterivards rigorously suppressed. This is the first time an effort has been made to present the entire series complete in one %>olume. Many tentati'ue efforts ha've previously been made, notably by the late M.r Heme Shep- herd, to republish the more important of these poems, but in the result all ivere rigorously repressed by TennysorCs orders. The expiry of copyright in 1900 made unrestrained republica- tion possible, and in that year Mr "J. R. Tutin issued a small 'volume containing ^^Timbuctoo^* ivith afeiv of the other sup- pressed poems. This ivas immediately folloived by Mr Chur- ton Collins' annotated variorum edition of Tennyson s 1842 volumes, in nvhich all the poems suppressed from the volumes of \%io and 1833 "^^^^ reprinted along ivith ^^ Timbuctoo.** Tennyson^ s contributions to the old-time annuals and magazines ivere hoivever ignored. The pages thatfolloiv contain probably little of very high poetic merit, but ivithout doubt much of extraordinary literary interest, Tennyson is a brilliant example of the adage that ^^ genius is the capacity of taking infinite pains^ Born pro- bably ivith little more than the average gift for rhyme, he early in life determined to be a poet, as another might deter- mine to be a doctor or a soldier. From that determination Tennyson never ivavered. Born into an assured social posi- tion in the middle class he never kneiv poverty, as poverty. The ivant of pence against ivhich he sometimes railed ivas relative, — never absolute. He could afford to keep almost unbroken silence for ten years. Happier than most men he had the divine gift of patience. He could ivork and ivait, and in ivaiting gained all he ivishedfor, H01V it comes that a volume o/" 130 pages is required to contain his suppressed poems is therefore easy of comprehension. The gradual development of his genius made Tennyson keenly sensitive of the supposed failures of his earlier ivork, and rather absurdly anxious to suppress ivhat he called " the rub- bish shot from his full finish* d cantos.** %)ery conscious alivays of his oivn poivers, he subjected even his published poems to a continual process of emendation, so that for his future editors he has provided a very mountain of research. What little claim viight hanje been ad'vanced for a due regard to Tenrty- son^s knoivn tvishes in the matter of his suppressed poems is of no a'vail since the publication of the " Life " by his son, Hallam. There ive are gi'ven a number of poems Tennyson himself ne'ver thought ivorthy of publication, and the further curious spectacle is presented of many of his suppressed poems being reprinted not as originally published, but ivith numerous alterations. So changed, they are of no 'value to the student of literature, and only for such is it nvorth ivhile reprinting them. Better for Tennyson had he allowed his earlier luork to stand untampered with, claiming such indulgence as earlier ivork alivays recei'ves. And it should always be remembered that much of the work Tennyson sought to suppress was written after the age at which Keats, Byron and Shelley had done their work and died, • , , ; .' CONTENTS PAGE Timbuctoo I From " Poems chiefly Lyrical " : The '* How "and the "Why" ... •• 13 The Burial of Love . 15 To .. 16 Song .. 17 Song .. 18 Hero to Leander 20 The Mystic 22 The Grasshopper ... . 24 Love, Pride and Forgetfulness ... . 26 Chorus ... ... . 27 Lost Hope ... . 28 The Tears of Heaven . 29 Love and Sorrow . 30 To a Lady Sleeping ... • 31 Sonnet . 32 Sonnet ... • 33 Sonnet . 34 Sonnet . 35 Love . 36 English War Song ... . 38 National Song . 40 Dualisms ... . 42 ol peovTes ... . 43 Song . 44 A Fragment (** The Gem, •■ 1831) '..'. '. . 46 Anacreontics ("The Gem r 1831) ... . . 48 No More (''The Gem," i 831) . 48 Sonnet (''Englishman's Magazine," 1831) . . 49 Sonnet (" Friendship's Offering," 1832) ' 50 viij CONTENTS PAGE Sonnet ("Yorkshire Literary Annual," 1832) 51 From " Poems," 1833 : Sonnet ... ... ... ., ... 52 The Hesperides 53 Rosalind ... ... ... ... ... 58 Song- 59 Sonnet... ... ... ... ... ... 60 O Darling Room 61 To Christopher North ... 62 The Lotos-Eaters 63 A Dream of Fair Women 65 To Bewick ... 66 Cambridge ... ... ... ... ... 67 The Germ of " Maud " 68 The Skipping Rope ('' Poems," 1842) ... 70 The New Timon and The Poets (*' Punch," 1846) ... 71 Mablethorpe ("Manchester Athenaeum Al- bum," 1850) 73 **What Time I wasted Youthful Hours" (" Keepsake," 1851) ... 74 Britons, Guard your Own (''Examiner," 1852) 75 Hands all Round ("Examiner," 1852) ... 78 Suggested by Reading an Article in a News- paper (" Examiner," 1852) 81 The Lover's Tale (1833) 86 Tennyson's Suppressed Poems Timbuctoo A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL AT THE Cambridge Commencement MDCCCXXIX BV A. Tennyson Of Trinity College. [Printed in Cambridg-e Chronicle and Journal of Friday, July lo, 1829, and at the University Press by James Smith, among the Prolusiones Academicce Prcemiis annuis dignatce, et in Curid Cantahrigiensi Recitatce Comitiis Max- imis, MDCCCXXIX. Republished in Cam- bridge Prise Poems, 18 13 to 1858, by Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, without alteration ; and in 1893 in the appendix to a reprint of Poems by Two Brothers. ] Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies A mystic city, goal of high Emprize. — Chapman. * I STOOD upon the Mountain which overlooks The narrow seas, whose rapid interval Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun Had falPn below th' Atlantick, and above * Mr Swinburne has failed to find this couplet in any of Chapman's original poems or transla- tions, and is of opinion that it is Tennyson's own. riMBucroo The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light, Uncertain whether faery light or cloud, Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars Were flooded over with clear glory and pale. I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond, There where the Giant of old Time infixed The limits of his prowess, pillars high Long time eras'd from Earth : even as the sea When weary of wild inroad buildeth up Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves. And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air; But had their being in the heart of Man As air is th' life of flame : and thou wert then A center'd glory-circled Memory, Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves Have buried deep, and thou of later name Imperial Eldorado roof'd with gold : Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change, All on-set of capricious Accident, Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die. As when in some great City where the walls Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd riMBUcroo Do utter forth a subterranean voice, Among the inner columns far retir'd At midnight, in the lone Acropolis. Before the awful Genius of the place Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks Unto the fearful summoning without ; Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees, Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith Her phantasy informs them. Where are ye Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green ? Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms, The blossoming abysses of your hills ? Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds? Where are the infinite ways which, Seraph- trod, Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes, Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love, Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd. Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems, And ever circling round their emerald cones In coronals and glories, such as gird TiMBucroo The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Hea- ven? For nothing visible, they say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play'd about With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd My voice and cried " Wide Afric, doth thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo A dream as frail as those of ancient Time ? " A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light ! A rustling of white wings 1 The bright descent Of a young Seraph I and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and looked into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs, So that with hasty motion I did veil My vision with both hands, and saw before me Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun. Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath His breast, and compass'd round about his brow With triple arch of everchanging bows. And circled with the glory of living light And alternation of all hues, he stood. " O child of man, why muse you here alone Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old Which fiird the Earth with passing loveliness, 4 riMBucroo Which flung strange music on the howling winds, And odours rapt from remote Paradise ? Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality, Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay : Open thine eye and see." I look'd, but not Upon his face, for it was wonderful With its exceeding brightness, and the light Of the great angel mind which look'd from out The starry glowing of his restless eyes. I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit With supernatural excitation bound Within me, and my mental eye grew large With such a vast circumference of thought, That in my vanity I seem'd to stand Upon the outward verge and bound alone Of full beatitude. Each failing sense As with a momentary flash of Hght Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth, The indistinctest atom in deep air, The Moon's white cities, and the opal width Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud. And the unsounded, undescended depth Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful, Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth riMBUClOO And harmony of planet-girded Suns And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel, Arched the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men. Or other things talking in unknown tongues, And notes of busy life in distant worlds Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear. A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts Involving and embracing each with each Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd. Expanding momently with every sight And sound which struck the palpitating sense. The issue of strong impulse, hurried through The riv'n rapt brain : as when in some large lake From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope At slender interval, the level calm Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres Which break upon each other, each th' effect Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong Than its precursor, till the eye in vain Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade Dappled with hollow and alternate rise Of interpenetrated arc, would scan Definite round. I know not if I shape These things with accurate similitude From visible objects, for but dimly now, 6 riMBUcroo Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream, The memory of that mental excellence Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine The indecision of my present mind With its past clearness, yet it seems to me As even then the torrent of quick thought Absorbed me from the nature of itself With its own fleetness. Where is he that, borne Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream, Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge, And muse midway with philosophic calm Upon the wondrous laws which regulate The fierceness of the bounding element ? My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime Of this dull world, Hke dusky worms which house Beneath unshaken waters, but at once Upon some earth-awakening day of spring Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides Double display of starlit wings which burn Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom : E'en so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt Unutterable buoyancy and strength To bear them upward through the trackless fields Of undefined existence far and free. Then first within the South methought I saw A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile 7 iiMBucroo Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome, Illimitable range of battlement On battlement, and the Imperial height Of Canopy o'ercanopied. Behind, In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft Upon his narrow'd Eminence bore globes Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances Of either, showering circular abyss Of radiance. But the glory of the place Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold Interminably high, if gold it were Or metal more ethereal, and beneath Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan Through length of porch and lake and bound- less hall. Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom The snowy skirting of a garment hung. And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes That minister'd around it — if I saw These things distinctly, for my human brain Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell. With ministering hand he raised me up ; Then with a mournful and ineffable smile, 7IMBUCT00 Which but to look on for a moment fill'd My eyes with irresistible sweet tears, In accents of majestic melody, Like a swol'n river's gushings in still night Mingled with floating music, thus he spake : "There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway The heart of man : and teach him to attain By shadowing forth the Unattainable ; And step by step to scale that mighty stair Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds Of glory of Heaven."* With earliest Light of Spring, And in the glow of sallow Summertide, And in red Autumn when the winds are wild With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs The headland with inviolate white snow, I play about his heart a thousand ways. Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears With harmonies of wind and wave and wood — Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters Betraying the close kisses of the wind — And win him unto me : and few there be So gross of heart who have not felt and known A higher than they see : They with dim eyes Behold me darkling. Lo ! I have given t/iee To understand my presence, and to feel * Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. TIMBUCTOO My fullness ; I have fiird thy lips with power. I have rais'd thee nigher to the Spheres of Heaven, Man's first, last home : and thou with ravish'd sense Listenest the lordly music flowing from Th' illimitable years. I am the Spirit, The permeating life which courseth through All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins Of the great vine of J^a^/e, which, outspread With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare, Reacheth to every corner under Heaven, Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth : So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in The fragrance of its complicated glooms And cool impleached twilights. Child of Man, See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave. Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through The argent streets o' the City, imaging The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes : Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm, Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells : Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite, Minarets and towers ? Lo ! how he passeth ^5" . . And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring To carry through the world those waves, which bore The reflex of my City in their depths. Oh City ! Oh latest Throne ! where I was rais'd TIMBUCrOO To be a mystery of loveliness Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come When I must render up this glorious home To keen Discot^ery : soon yon brilliant towers Shall darken with the waving of her wand ; Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts, Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand, Low-built, mud-wall'd, Barbarian settlement, How chang'd from this fair City ! " Thus far the Spirit : Then parted Heavenward on the wing : and I Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon Had fallen from the night, and all was dark ! [A few lines from ** Timbuctoo " were incorporated in " Ode to Memory " (1830) and ''The Lover's Tale "(1833)]. [The following review of "Timbuctoo " was pub- lished in the Athencetirn of July 22, 1829: "We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The ag^e seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner ; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it — namely, in a prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any men that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us ; and the examiners seem to riMRUClOO have felt it like ourselves, for they have as- sig-ned the prize to the author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour. We ex- tract a few lines to justify our admiration (50 lines, 62-112, quoted). How many men have lived for a century who could equal this ? " At the time when this highly eulogistic notice of the youthful unknown poet appeared, the Athenceutn was edited by John Sterling and Frederick Denison Maurice, its then pro- prietors.] 12 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL [The followlngpoems, numbered I-XXIV, appeared in the volume Poems chiefly Lyrical, London : Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830. They were never republished by Tennyson : nor were they obtainable in England in any form until the appearance of Mr Churton Collins* edition of Tennyson's Early Poems. In America, however, they have been current in various more or less incomplete forms.] I The "How" and the "Why" I AM any man's suitor, If any will be my tutor : Some say this life is pleasant, Some think it speedeth fast : In time there is no present, In eternity no future, In eternity no past. We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die. Who will riddle me the how and the why 1 The bulrush nods unto his brother The wheatears whisper to each other : What is it they say ? What do they there ? Why two and two make four? Why round is not square ? Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly? '3 POEMS CIITEFLT LTRTCAL Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh ? Why deep is not high, and high is not deep ? Whether we wake or whether we sleep ? Whether we sleep or whether we die ? How you are you ? Why I am I ? Who will riddle me the how and the why ? The world is somewhat ; it goes on somehow ; But what is the meaning of then and now ? I feel there is something ; but how and what? I know there is somewhat; but what and why? I cannot tell if that somewhat be I. The little bird pipeth " why ? why ? " In the summerwoods when the sun falls low, And the great bird sits on the opposite bough, And stares in his face and shouts *' how ? how?" And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight. And chaunts " how ? how ? " the whole of the night. Why the life goes when the blood is spilt ? What the life is ? where the soul may lie ? Why a church is with a steeple built ; And a house with a chimney-pot ? Who will riddle me the how and the what ? Who will riddle me the what and the why ? H POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL II The Burial of Love His eyes in eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed. Backward drooping his graceful head. Love is dead ; His last arrow sped ; He hath not another dart ; Go — carry him to his dark deathbed ; Bury him in the cold, cold heart — Love is dead. Oh, truest love ! art thou forlorn. And unrevenged ? thy pleasant wiles Forgotten, and thine innocent joy ? Shall hollow-hearted apathy. The cruellest form of perfect scorn, With languor of most hateful smiles. For ever write In the weathered light Of the tearless eye An epitaph that all may spy ? No ! sooner she herself shall die. 15 POEMS CHIEFLY LTRJC^L For her the showers shall not fall, Nor the round sun that shineth to all ; Her light shall into darkness change ; For her the green grass shall not spring, Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing, Till Love have his full revenge. III To Sainted Juliet ! dearest name ! If to love be Hfe alone, Divinest Juliet, I love thee, and live ; and yet Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice Oflered to Gods upon an altarthrone ; My heart is lighted at thine eyes. Changed into fire, and blown about with sighs. i6 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL IV Song r the glooming light Of middle night, So cold and white, Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave ; Beside her are laid Her mattock and spade, For she hath half delved her own deep grave. Alone she is there : The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose; Her shoulders are bare ; Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews. Death standeth by ; She will not die ; With glazed eye She looks at her grave : she cannot sleep ; Ever alone She maketh her moan : She cannot speak ; she can only weep ; For she will not hope. The thick snow falls on her flake by flake, The dull wave mourns down the slope. The world will not change, and her heart will not break. POEMS CHIEFLT LTRICAL Song Every day hath its night : Every night its morn : Through dark and bright Winged hours are borne ; Ah ! welaway ! Seasons flower and fade ; Golden calm and storm Mingle day by day. There is no bright form Doth not cast a shade — Ah ! welaway I When we laugh, and our mirth Apes the happy vein, We're so kin to earth Pleasaunce fathers pain — Ah ! welaway ! Madness laugheth loud : Laughter bringeth tears : Eyes are worn away Till the end of fears Cometh in the shroud. Ah ! welaway ! i8 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL III All is change, woe or weal ; Joy is sorrow's brother ; Grief and sadness steal Symbols of each other \ Ah ! welaway ! Larks in heaven's cope Sing : the culvers mourn All the livelong day. Be not all forlorn ; Let us weep in hope — Ah ! welaway ! 19 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL VI Hero to Leander Oh go not yet, my love, The night is dark and vast ; The white moon is hid in her heaven above, And the waves climb high and fast. Oh ! kiss me, kiss me, once again, Lest thy kiss should be the last. Oh kiss me ere we part j Grow closer to my heart. My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main. Oh joy ! O bliss of blisses ! My heart of hearts art thou. Come bathe me with thy kisses, My eyelids and my brow. Hark how the wild rain hisses, And the loud sea roars below. Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs So gladly doth it stir ; Thine eye in drops of gladness swims. I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh ; Thy locks are dripping balm ; Thou shalt not wander hence to-night, ril stay thee with my kisses. 20 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL To-night the roaring brine Will rend thy golden tresses ; The ocean with the morrow light Will be both blue and calm ; And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine. No western odours wander On the black and moaning sea, And when thou art dead, Leander, My soul must follow thee ! Oh go not yet, my love. Thy voice is sweet and low ; The deep salt wave breaks in above Those marble steps below. The turretstairs are wet That lead into the sea. Leander ! go not yet. The pleasant stars have set : Oh ! go not, go not yet, Or I will follow thee. POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL VII The Mystic Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones : Ye knew him not : he was not one of ye, Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn : Ye could not read the marvel in his eye. The still serene abstraction ; he hath felt The vanities of after and before ; Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart The stern experiences of converse lives, The Hnked woes of many a fiery change Had purified, and chastened, and made free. Always there stood before him, night and day, Of wayward vary coloured circumstance. The imperishable presences serene. Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound, Dim shadows but unwaning presences Fourfaced to four corners of the sky ; And yet again, three shadows, fronting one, One forward, one respectant, three but one \ And yet again, again and evermore, For the two first were not, but only seemed One shadow in the midst of a great light, One reflex from eternity on time. One mighty countenance of perfect calm, Awful with most invariable eyes. POEMS CHIEFLT LTRICj^L For him the silent congregated hours, Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld) Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud Which droops low hung on either gate of life, Both birth and death ; he in the centre fixt, Saw far on each side through the grated gates Most pale and clear and lovely distances. He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night. And all things creeping to a day of doom. How could ye know him ? Ye were yet within The narrower circle ; he had wellnigh reached The last, with which a region of white flame, Pure without heat, into a larger air Upburning, and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives. 33 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL VIII The Grasshopper Voice of the summerwind, Joy of the summerplain, Life of the summerhours, Carol clearly, bound along. No Tithon thou as poets feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect Hthe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete ; Armed cap-a-pie. Full fair to see ; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier Sans peur et sans reproche^ In sunlight and in shadow. The Bayard of the meadow. 24 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL I would dwell with thee, Merry grasshopper, Thou art so glad and free, And as light as air ; Thou hast no sorrow or tears, Thou hast no compt of years, No withered immortality. But a short youth sunny and free. Carol clearly, bound along, Soon thy joy is over, A summer of loud song, And slumbers in the clover. What hast thou to do with evil In thine hour of love and revel. In thy heat of summerpride. Pushing the thick roots aside Of the singing flowered grasses. That brush thee with their silken tresses? What hast thou to do with evil. Shooting, singing, ever springing In and out the emerald glooms, Ever leaping, ever singing, Lighting on the golden blooms ? 25 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL IX LovCj Pride and Forgetfulness Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb, Love laboured honey busily. I was the hive and Love the bee, My heart the honey-comb. One very dark and chilly night Pride came beneath and held a Hght. The cruel vapours went through all, Sweet Love was withered in his cell ; Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell Did change them into gall ; And Memory tho' fed by Pride Did wax so thin on gall, Awhile she scarcely lived at all. What marvel that she died ? a6 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL X Chorus In an unpublished drama written very early The varied earth, the moving heaven^ The rapid waste of roving sea, The fountainpregnant mountains riven To shapes of wildest anarchy. By secret fire and midnight storms That wander round their windy cones, The subtle life, the countless forms Of living things, the wondrous tones Of man and beast are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. The day, the diamonded light, The echo, feeble child of sound. The heavy thunder's girding might, The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom. The naked summer's glowing birth, The troublous autumn's sallow gloom. The hoarhead winter paving earth With sheeny white, are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. 27 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL Each sun which from the centre flings Grand music and redundant fire, The burning belts, the mighty rings, The murmurous planets' rolling choir, The globefiUed arch that, cleaving air. Lost in its effulgence sleeps, The lawless comets as they glare. And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps In wayward strength, are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change. XI Lost Hope You cast to ground the hope which once was mine. But did the while your harsh decree de- plore. Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine, My heart, where Hope had been and was no more. So on an oaken sprout A goodly acorn grew ; But winds from heaven shook the acorn out, And filled the cup with dew. 28 POEMS CHIEFLY LTRICAL XII The Tears of Heaven Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn, In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep. Because the earth hath made her state forlorn With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years, And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap. And all the day heaven gathers back her tears Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep. And showering down the glory of lightsome day. Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may. ^9 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XIII Love and Sorrow O Maiden, fresher than the first green leaf With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea, Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief Doth hold the other half in sovranty. Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline : Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine: Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart, Issue of its own substance, my heart's night Thou canst not lighten even with thy light, All powerful in beauty as thou art. Almeida, if my heart were substanceless, Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side. So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide, But lose themselves in utter emptiness. Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep ; They never learnt to love who never knew to weep. 30 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XIV To a Lady Sleeping O THOU whose fringed lids I gaze upon, Through whose dim brain the winged dreams are borne, Unroof the shrines of clearest vision, In honour of the silverflecked morn : Long hath the white wave of the virgin light Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark. Thou all unwittingly prolongest night, Though long ago listening the poised lark, With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene, Over heaven's parapets the angels lean. 31 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XV Sonnet Could I outwear my present state of woe With one brief winter, and indue i' the spring Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow The wan dark coil of faded suffering — Forth in the pride of beauty issuing A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers, Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers And watered vallies where the young birds sing ; Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing, I straightly would commend the tears to creep From my charged lids ; but inwardly I weep : Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing : This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain From my cold eyes and melted it again. 32 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XVI Sonnet Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon, And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl, All night through archways of the bridged pearl And portals of pure silver walks the moon. Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony : Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy. And dross to gold with glorious alchemy, Basing thy throne above the world's annoy. Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth That roar beneath ; unshaken peace hath won thee : So shalt thou pierce the woven glooms of truth ; So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee ; So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth, An honourable eld shall come upon thee. ZZ POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XVII Sonnet Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good, Or propagate again her loathed kind, Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood, Though hourly pastured on the salient blood ? Oh ! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat Of their broad vans, and in the solitude Of middle space confound them, and blow back Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne 1 So their wan limbs no more might come be- tween The moon and the moon's reflex in the night ; Nor blot with floating shades the solar light. 34 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL XVIII Sonnet The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain, Down an ideal stream they ever float, And sailing on Pactolus in a boat, Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe The understream. The wise could he behold Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbed gold And branching silvers of the central globe. Would marvel from so beautiful a sight How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow : But Hatred in a gold cave sits below. Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips And skins the colour from her trembling lips. 35 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XIX Love Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love, Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near, Before the face of God didst breathe and move, Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here. Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere, The very throne of the eternal God : Passing through thee the edicts of his fear Are mellowed into music, borne abroad By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea, Even from his central deeps : thine empery Is over all : thou wilt not brook eclipse ; Thou goest and returnest to His Lips Like lightning : thou dost ever brood above The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love. II To know thee is all wisdom, and old age Is but to know thee : dimly we behold thee Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee. We beat upon our aching hearts with rage ; We cry for thee : we deem the world thy tomb. 36 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL As dwellers in lone planets look upon The mighty disk of their majestic sun, Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom, Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee. Come, thou of many crowns, white-robed love, Oh ! rend the veil in twain : all men adore thee; Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for thee: Breathe on thy winged throne, and it shall move In music and in light o'er land and sea. Ill And now — methinks I gaze upon thee now, As on a ser[)ent in his agonies Awestricken Indians ; what time laid low And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he lies. When the new year warm breathed on the earth. Waiting to light him with his purple skies, Calls to him by the fountain to uprise. Already with the pangs of a new birth Strain the hot spheres of his convulsed eyes. And in his writhings awful hues begin To wander down his sable sheeny sides, Like light on troubled waters : from within Anon he rusheth forth with merry din, And in him light and joy and strength abides; And from his brows a crown of living light Looks through the thickstemmed woods by day and night. 37 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL XX English War Song Who fears to die ? Who fears to die ? Is there any here who fears to die He shall find what he fears, and none shall grieve For the man who fears to die ; But the withering scorn of the many shall cleave To the man who fears to die. Chorus, — Shout for England ! Ho ! for England ! George for England ! Merry England ! England for aye ! The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn, He shall eat the bread of common scorn ; It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear. Shall be steeped in his own salt tear : Far better, far better he never were born Than to shame merry England here. Chorus, — Shout for England ! etc. 38 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL There standeth our ancient enemy ; Hark ! he shouteth — the ancient enemy ! On the ridge of the hill his banners rise ; They stream like fire in the skies ; Hold up the Lion of England on high Till it dazzle and blind his eyes. Chorus, — Shout for England ! etc. Come along ! we alone of the earth are free ; The child in our cradles is bolder than he ; For where is the heart and strength of slaves ? Oh ! where is the strength of slaves ? He is weak! we are strong; he a slave, we are free ; Come along ! we will dig their graves. Chorus. — Shout for England ! etc. There standeth our ancient enemy ; Will he dare to battle with the free ? Spur along ! spur amain ! charge to the fight: Charge ! charge to the fight ! Hold up the Lion of England on high ! Shout for God and our right ! Chorus. — Shout for England ! etc. 39 POEMS CHIEFLY LTRICy^L XXI National Song There is no land like England Where'er the light of day be ; There are no hearts like English hearts, Such hearts of oak as they be. There is no land like England Where'er the light of day be ; There are no men Hke Englishmen, So tall and bold as they bj. Chorus. — P'or the French the Pope may shrive 'em, For the devil a whit we heed 'em, As for the French, God speed 'em Unto their hearts' desire. And the merry devil drive 'em Through the water and the fire. Chorus, — Our glory is our freedom. We lord it o'er the sea ; We are the sons of freedom^ We are free. 40 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be , There are no wives like English wives, So fair and chaste as they be. There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be, There are no maids like English maids, So beautiful as they be. Chorus. — For the French, etc. [Sixty years after first publication this Song was republished as the opening- chorus of the second act of '*The Foresters." Two new choruses were substituted for the original ones, but the two verses are unchanged]. 41 POEMS CHIEFLY LYBJCAL XXII Dualisms Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rocked Hum a lovelay to the westwind at noontide. Both alike, they buzz together, Both aUke, they hum together Through and through the flowered heather. Where in a creeping cove the wave unshocked Lays itself calm and wide, Over a stream two birds of glancing feather Do woo each other, carolling together. Both alike, they glide together Side by side ; Both alike, they sing together, Arching blue-glossed necks beneath the purple weather. Two children lovelier than love, adown the lea are singing, As they gambol, lilygarlands ever stringing : Both in blosmwhite silk are frocked : Like, unlike, they roam together Under a summervault of golden weather ; Like, unlike, they sing together Side by side ; Mid May's darling goldenlocked. Summer's tanling diamondeyed. 42 POEMS CHIEFLT LYRICAL XXIII ol piovTes I All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, All visions wild and strange; Man is the measure of all truth Unto himself. All truth is change : All men do walk in sleep, and all Have faith in that they dream : For all things are as they seem to all. And all things flow like a stream. II There is no rest, no calm, no pause. Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade. Nor essence nor eternal laws : For nothing is, but all is made, But if I dream that all these are, They are to me for that I dream ; For all things are as they seem to all, And all things flow like a stream, Avga.1 — This very opinion is only true relatively to the flowing philosophers. (Tennyson's note.) 43 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL XXIV Song The lintwhite and the throstlecock Have voices sweet and clear ; All in the bloomed May. They from the blosmy brere Call to the feeting year, If that he would them hear And stay. Alas ! that one so beautiful Should have so dull an ear. II Fair year, fair year, thy children call, But thou art deaf as death ; All in the bloomed May. When thy light perisheth That from thee issueth, Our life evanisheth : Oh! stay. Alas ! that lips so cruel dumb Should have so sweet a breath ! 44 POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL III Fair year, with brows of royal love Thou comest, as a King. All in the bloomed May. Thy golden largess fling, And longer hear us sing ; Though thou art fleet of wing. Yet stay. Alas ! that eyes so full of light Should be so wandering ! IV Thy locks are full of sunny sheen In rings of gold yronne,"^ All in the bloomed May, We pri' thee pass not on ; If thou dost leave the sun. Delight is with thee gone. Oh! stay. Thou art the fairest of thy feres, We pri' thee pass not on. * His crisp^ hair in ringis was yronne.- Chaucer, Knighfs Tale (Tennyson's note). 45 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XXV A Fragment [Published in The Gem: a Literary Annual, Lon- don : W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi] Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes, A perfect Idol with profulgent brows Far sheening down the purple seas to those Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the star Named of the Dragon — and between whose limbs Of brassy vastness broad-blown Argosies Drave into haven ? Yet endure unscathed Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids Broad-based amid the fleeting sands, and sloped Into the slumberous summer noon; but where. Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned? Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile ? Thy shadowing Idols in the solitudes, Awful Memnonian countenances calm Looking athwart the burning flats, far off Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge Journeying southward? Where are thy monu- ments 47 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim Over their crowned brethren On and Oph ? Thy Memnon, when hispeacefuUips are kissed With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes Flow over the Arabian bay, no more Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone down : The Pharaohs are no more : somewhere in death They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips, Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots Rock-hewn and sealed for ever. 46 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XXVI Anacreontics [Published in The Gem: a Literary A^inual. Lon- don : W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi] With roses musky breathed, And drooping daffodilly, And silverleaved lily, And ivy darkly-wreathed, I wove a crown before her. For her I love so dearly, A garland for Lenora. With a silken cord I bound it. Lenora, laughing clearly A light and thrilling laughter, About her forehead wound it. And loved me ever after. XXVII [Published in The Gem: a Literary Afinual. Lon- don : W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi] SAD No more ! O sweet No mo7e ! O strange No more! By a mossed brookbank on a stone 1 smelt a wildweed flower alone ; There was a ringing in my ears. And both my eyes gushed out with tears. Surely all pleasant things had gone before. Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee, NO MORE ! CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XXVIII Sonnet [Published in the Englishvian's Magaziney August, 183T. London : Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. Reprinted in Friejidship' s Offering: a Literary Album for 1833. Lon- don : Smith and Elder. Reprinted in Life^ vol. I, p. 80.] Check every outflash, every ruder sally Of thought and speech ; speak low, and give up wholly Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy ; This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly ; But in the middle of the sombre valley The crisped waters whisper musically, And all the haunted place is dark and holy. The nightingale, with long and low preamble, Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches. And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches The summer midges wove their wanton gambol. And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above — When in this valley first I told my love. 49 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XXIX Sonnet [Published in Friendship's Offering: a Literary Album for 1832. London : Smith and Elder. Reprinted, unaltered, in Life^ vol. I, p. 65.] Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh : Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory : Thy spirit, circled with a Hving glory, In summer still a summer joy resumeth. Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh, Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary, From an old garden where no flower bloometh, One cypress on an inland promontory. But yet my lonely spirit follows thine, As round the rolling earth night follows day : But yet thy lights on my horizon shine Into my night when thou art far away ; I am so dark, alas ! and thou so bright, When we two meet there's never perfect light. 50 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XXX Sonnet [Published in the Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832. Edited by C. F. Edgar. London : Longman and Co. 'R.e^rmiedmih.Q A thericeum^ May 4, 1867] There are three things that fill my heart with sighs And steep my soul in laughter (when I view Fair maiden forms moving like melodies), Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue. There are three things beneath the blessed skies For which I live — black eyes, and brown and blue ; I hold them all most dear ; but oh ! black eyes, I live and die, and only die for you. Of late such eyes looked at me — while I mused At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane In old Bayona, nigh the Southern Sea — From an half-open lattice looked at 7iie. I saw no more only those eyes — confused And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain. 51 POEMS, 1833 [The poems numbered XXXI-XXXIX were pub- lished in the 1832 volume Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street, MDCCCXXXIII (published December, 1832), and were thereafter sup- pressed.] XXXI Sonnet Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet! How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs ? I only ask to sit beside thy feet. Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes, Might I but kiss thy hand ! I dare not fold My arms about thee — scarcely dare to speak. And nothing seems to me so wild and bold. As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek. Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke, The bare word kiss hath made my inner soul To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note Hath melted in the silence that it broke. S3 POEMS, 1833 XXXII The Hesperides Hesperus and his daugfhters three That sing- about the golden tree. — COMUS. The Northwind faH'n, in the newstarred night Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond The hoary promontory of Soloe Past Thymiaterion, in calnaed bays, Between the Southern and the Western Horn, Heard neither warbUng of the nightingale. Nor melody o^ the Lybian lotusflute Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue. Beneath a highland leaning down a weight Of cliifsj and zoned below with cedarshade, Came voices, like the voices in a dream, Continuous, till he reached the other sea. Song I The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallov/ed fruit, Guard it well, guard it warily. Singing airily. Standing about the charmed root. Round about all is mute. As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks, As the sandfield at the mountain-foot. 53 POEMS, 1833 Crocodiles in briny creeks Sleep and stir not : all is mute. If ye sing not, if ye make false measure, We shall lose eternal pleasure, Worth eternal want of rest. Laugh not loudly : watch the treasure Of the wisdom of the West. In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three (Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery. For the blossom unto three-fold music bloweth; Evermore it is born anew ; And the sap to three-fold music floweth, From the root Drawn in the dark, Up to the fruit, Creeping under the fragrant bark, Liquid gold, honeysweet thro' and thro'. Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily. Looking warily Every way, Guard the apple night and day. Lest one from the East come and take it away. II Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, ever and aye. Looking under silver hair with a silver eye. Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight ; Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die ; Honour comes with mystery ; Hoarded wisdom brings delight. 54 POEMS, 1833 Number, tell them over and number How many the mystic fruit-tree holds, Lest the redcombed dragon slumber Rolled together in purple folds. Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away. For his ancient heart is drunk with over- watchings night and day. Round about the hallowed fruit tree curled — Sing away, sing aloud evermore in the wind, without stop, Lest his scaled eyelid drop, For he is older than the world. If he waken, we waken. Rapidly levelling eager eyes. If he sleep, we sleep, Dropping the eyelid over the eyes. If the golden apple be taken The world will be overwise. Five links, a golden chain, are we, Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three, Bound about the golden tree. Ill Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day. Lest the old wound of the world be healed, The glory unsealed, The golden apple stol'n away. And the ancient secret revealed. Look from west to east along : Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong. 55 POEMS, 1833 Wandering waters unto wandering waters call; Let them clash together, foam and fall. Out of watchings, out of wiles, Comes the bliss of secret smiles. All things are not told to all, Half-round the mantling night is drawn, Purplefringed with even and dawn. H esper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn. IV Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath Of this warm seawind ripeneth, Arching the billow in his sleep ; But the landwind wandereth, Broken by the highland-steep, Tw^o streams upon the violet deep : For the western sun and the western star. And the low west wind, breathing afar. The end of day and beginning of night Make the apple holy and bright, Holy and bright, round and full, bright and blest, Mellowed in a land of rest ; Watch it warily day and night ; All good things are in the west. Till midnoon the cool east light Is shut out by the round of the tall hillbrow; But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly Stays on the flowering arch of the bough, The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly, Goldenkernelled, goldencored, 56 POEMS, 1833 Sunset ripened, above on the tree, The world is wasted with fire and sword, But the apple of gold hangs over the sea. Five links, a golden chain, are we, Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three, Daughters three. Bound about All round about The gnarled bole of the charmed tree, The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit. Guard it well, guard it warily. Watch it warily, Singing airily. Standing about the charmed root. hi POEMS, 1833 XXXIII Rosalind [When the poem '* Rosalind" was reprinted in the 1884 edition of the Poems, the following lines were suppressed.] My Rosalind, my Rosalind, Bold, subtle, careless Rosalind, Is one of those who know no strife Of inward woe or outward fear ; To whom the slope and stream of life, The life before, the life behind, In the ear, from far and near, Chimeth musically clear. My falconhearted Rosalind Fullsailed before a vigorous wind, Is one of those who cannot weep For others' woes, but overleap All the petty shocks and fears That trouble life in early years, With a flash of frolic scorn And keen delight, that never falls Away from freshness, self-upborne With such gladness, as, whenever The freshflushing springtime calls To the flooding waters cool. Young fishes, on an April morn, 58 POEMS, 1833 Up and down a rapid river, Leap the little waterfalls That sing into the pebbled pool. My happy falcon, Rosalind, Hath daring fancies of her own. Fresh as the dawn before the day. Fresh as the early seasmell blown Through vineyards from an inland bay. My Rosalind, my Rosalind, Because no shadow on you falls. Think you hearts are tennis balls 1 o play with, wanton Rosalind ? XXXIV Song Who can say Why To-day To-morrow will be yesterday ? Who can tell Why to smell The violet, recalls the dewy prime Of youth and buried time ? The cause is nowhere found in rhyme. 59 POEMS, 1833 XXXV Sonnet Written on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection, Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar The hosts to battle : be not bought and sold. Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold; Break through your iron shackles — fling them far. O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar Grew to this strength among his deserts cold; When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled The growing murmurs of the Pohsh war! Now must your noble anger blaze out more Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan, The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before — Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan, Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore Boleslas drove the Pomeranian. 60 POEMS, 1833 XXXVI O Darling Room * I O DARLING room, my heart's delight, Dear room, the apple of my sight. With thy two couches soft and white, There is no room so exquisite. No little room so warm and bright Wherein to read, wherein to write. II For I the Nonnenwerth have seen. And Oberwinter's vineyards green. Musical Lurlei ; and between The hills to Bingen have 1 been, Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene. Ill Yet never did there meet my sight. In any town, to left or right, A little room so exquisite, With two such couches soft and white ; Not any room so warm and bright. Wherein to read, wherein to write. * ' *As soon as this poem was published, I altered the second line to ' All books and pictures rang-ed arig^ht ' ; yet * Dear room, the apple of my sight ' (which was much abused) Is not as bad as ' Do gfo, dear rain, do g-o away' " [Note initialed ** A. T." in Life, vol. I, p. 89]. The worthlessness of most of the criticism lavished on Tennyson by his coterie of adulating friends may be judged from the fact that Arthur Hallam wrote to Tennyson that this poem was '* mighty pleasant" ! 61 POEMS, 1833 XXXVII To Christopher North You did late review my lays, Crusty Christopher ; You did mingle blame and praise, Rusty Christopher. When I learnt from whom it came, I forgave you all the blame, Musty Christopher ; I could no^ forgive the praise, Fusty Christopher. [This epigram was Tennyson's reply to an article by Professor Wilson— " Christopher North " — in Blackwood's Magazhie for May 1832, dealing" in sensible fashion with Tennyson's 1830 volume, and ridiculing the fulsome praise lavished on him by his inconsiderate friends — especially referring- to Arthur Hallam's article in the EngUshmayi' s Magazine for August, 1 83 1 . ] 62 POEMS, 1833 XXXVIII The Lotos-Eaters [These forty lines formed the conclusion to the original (1833) version of the poem. When the poem was reprinted in the 1842 volumes these lines were suppressed.] We have had enough of motion, Weariness and wild alarm, Tossing on the tossing ocean. Where the tusked seahorse walloweth In a stripe of grassgreen calm. At noon-tide beneath the lee ; And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth His foamfountains in the sea. Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry. This is lovelier and sweeter. Men of Ithaca, this is meeter. In the hollow rosy vale to tarry, Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos- eater ! We will eat the Lotos, sweet As the yellow honeycomb, In the valley some, and some On the ancient heights divine ; And no more roam, On the loud hoar foam, To the melancholy home 63 POEMS, 1833 At the limit of the brine, The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline. We'll lift no more the shattered oar, No more unfurl the straining sail ; With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale We will abide in the golden vale Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail ; We will not wander more. Hark ! how sweet the horned ewes bleat On the solitary steeps, And the merry lizard leaps. And the foam-white waters pour ; And the dark pine weeps. And the lithe vine creeps, And the heavy melon sleeps On the level of the shore : Oh ! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar. Oh ! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more. 64 POEMS, 1833 XXXIX A Dream of Fair Women [In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These FitzGerald considered made '* a perfect poem by themselves." These stanzas are printed in Life, Vol. I, p. 121]. As when a man, that sails in a balloon, Downlooking sees the solid shining ground Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon, Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound : And takes his flags and waves them to the mob That shout below, all faces turned to where Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe, Filled with a finer air : So, lifted high, the poet at his will Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all. Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still, Self-poised, nor fears to fall, 65 POEMS, 1833 Hearing apart the echoes of his fame. While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Me- mory, Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name Whose glory will not die. XL [On the fly-leaf of a book illustrated by Bewick, in the library of the late Lord Ravensworth, the following- lines in Tennyson's autograph were recently discovered.] A gate and a field half ploughed, A solitary cow, A child with a broken slate, And a titmarsh in the bough. But where, alack, is Bewick To tell the meaning now ? 66 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XLI Cambridge [This poem is written in pencil in the fly leaf of a copy of Poems 1833 in the Dyce collection in South Kensington Museum. Reprinted with many alterations in Life, vol. I, p. 67.] Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges, Your portals statued with old kings and queens. Your bridges and your busted libraries, VVax-lighted chapels and rich carved screens, Your doctors and your proctors and your deans Shall not avail you when the day-beam sports New-risen o'er awakened Albion — No, Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow Melodious thunders through your vacant courts At morn and even ; for your manner sorts Not with this age, nor with the thoughts that roll. Because the words of little children preach Against you, — ye that did profess to teach And have taught nothing, feeding on the soul. 07 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XLII TheGermof^^Maud" [There was published in 1837 in the The Tfibute, (a collection of unpublished poems by various authors, edited by Lord Northampton), a con- tribution by Tennyson entitled '* Stanzas," consisting- of xvi stanzas of varying- lengths (no lines in all). In 1855 the first xii stanzas were published as the fourth section of the second part of *' Maud." Some verbal changes and transpositions of lines were made ; a new stanza (the present sixth) and several new lines were introduced, and the xth stanza of 1837 became the xiiith of 1855. But stanzas xiii-xvi of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edi- tion of Tennyson's works, though quoted in whole or part in various critical studies of the poet. Swinburne refers to this poem as "the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written, even by Mr Tennyson." This poem in The Tribute grained Tennyson his first notice in the Edin- burgh Review, which had till then igfnored him.] XIII But she tarries in her place And I paint the beauteous face Of the maiden, that I lost, In my inner eyes again, Lest my heart be overborne By the thing I hold in scorn, By a dull mechanic ghost And a juggle of the brain. 68 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XIV I can shadow forth my bride As I knew her fair and kind As I woo'd her for my wife j She is lovely by my side In the silence of my life — Tis a phantom of the mind. XV 'Tis a phantom fair and good I can call it to my side, So to guard my Hfe from ill, Tho' its ghastly sister glide And be moved around me still With the moving of the blood That is moved not of the will. XVI Let it pass, the dreary brow, Let the dismal face go by, Will it lead me to the grave ? Then I lose it : it will fly : Can it overlast the nerves ? Can it overlive the eye ? But the other, hke a star, Thro' the charmel windeth far Till it fade and fail and die, To its Archetype that waits Clad in hght by golden gates, Clad in light the Spirit waits To embrace me in the sky. 69 POEMS, 1842 XLIII The Skipping-Rope [This poem, published in the second volume of Poems by Alfred Tennyson (in two voUimes, London, Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII), was reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed.] Sure never yet was Antelope Could skip so lightly by. Stand off, or else my skipping-rope Will hit you in the eye. How lightly whirls the skipping-rope ! How fairy-like you fly ! Go, get you gone, you muse and mope — I hate that silly sigh. Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope, Or tell me how to die. There, take it, take my skipping-rope And hang yourself thereby. 70 C0N7FIBUTI0NS 70 PERIODICALS XLIV The New Timon and the Poets [From Punchy February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his satirical poem " New Timon : a Romance of London," in which he bitterly attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension g-ranted the previous year, particu- larly referring to the poem "O Darling* Room" in the 1833 volume. Tennyson re- plied in the following vigorous verses, which made the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared : " I never sent my lines to Punch. John Forster did. They were too bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published them." — Life, vol. I, p. 245.] We know him, out of Shakespeare's art, And those fine curses which he spoke ; The old Timon, with his noble heart, That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. So died the Old : here comes the New : Regard him : a familiar face : I thought we knew him : What, it's you The padded man — that wears the stays — Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys With dandy pathos when you wrote, A Lion, you, that made a noise. And shook a mane en papillotes. 71 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS And once you tried the Muses too : You fail'd, Sir : therefore now you turn, You fall on those who are to you As captain is to subaltern. But men of long enduring hopes, And careless what this hour may bring, Can pardon little would-be Popes And Brummels, when they try to sting. An artist. Sir, should rest in art, And waive a little of his claim ; To have the deep poetic heart Is more than all poetic fame. But you. Sir, you are hard to please ; You never look but half content : Nor hke a gentleman at ease With moral breadth of temperament. And what with spites and what with fears. You cannot let a body be : It's always ringing in your ears, " They call this man as good as me.^^ What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt — A dapper boot — a little hand — If half the little soul is dirt ? You talk of tinsel ! why we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. Vou prate of nature 1 you are he That spilt his life about the cliques. 7a CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS A Timon you ! Nay, nay, for shame : It looks too arrogant a jest — The fierce old man — to take /its name You bandbox. Off, and let him rest. XLV Mablethorpe [Published in Manchester Athenceum Alhum^ 1850. Reprinted in Cope's Tobacco Plants 1875, Written, 1837. Republished, altered, in Life vol. I, p. 161.] How often, when a child I lay reclined, I took delight in this locality ! Here stood the infant IHon of the mind, And here the Grecian ships did seem to be. And here again I come and only find The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea, — Gray sand banks and pale sunsets — dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy clouded sea. 73 CONTRIBUTIONS 10 PERIODICALS XLVI [Published in The Keepsake for i8^i : an illustrated annual, edited by Miss Power. London : David Bogue. To this issue of the Keepsake Tennyson also contributed " Come not when I am dead " now included in the collected Works.] What time I wasted youthful hours One of the shining winged powers, Show'd me vast dififs with crown of towers, As towards the gracious Hght I bow'd. They seem'd high palaces and proud, Hid now and then with sliding cloud. He said, *'The labour is not small; Yet winds the pathway free to all : — Take care thou dost not fear to fall ! " 74 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XLVII Britons, Guard your Own [Published in The Examiyier, January 31, 1852. Verses i (considerably altered), 7, 8 and 10, are reprinted in Life, Vol I, p. 344.] Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead ; The world's last tempest darkens overhead ; The Pope has bless'd him \ The Church caress'd him ; He triumphs ; maybe, we shall stand alone : Britons, guard your own. His ruthless host is bought with plunder'dgold, By lying priest's the peasant's votes controlled. All freedom vanish'd, The true men banish'd. He triumphs \ maybe, we shall stand alone. Britons, guard your own. Peace-lovers we — sweet Peace we all desire — Peace-lovers we — but who can trust a liar? — Peace-lovers, haters Of shameless traitors, We hate not France, but this man's heart of stone. Britons, guard your own. 75 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS We hate not France, but France has lost her voice This man is France, the man they call her choice. By tricks and spying, By craft and lying, And murder was her freedom overthrown. Britons, guard your own. " Vive TEmpereur " may follow by and bye ; ** God save the Queen " is here a truer cry. God save the Nation, The toleration. And the free speech that makes a Briton known. Britons, guard your own. Rome's dearest daughter nowis captive France, The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance. Would, unrelenting, Kill all dissenting. Till we were left to fight for truth alone. Britons, guard your own. Call home your ships across Biscayan tides. To blow the battle from their oaken sides. Why waste they yonder Their idle thunder ? Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne? Seamen, guard your own. 76 CONTRIBUIIONS TO PERIODICALS We were the best of marksmen long ago, We won old battles with our strength, the bow. Now practise, yeomen. Like those bowmen, Till your balls fly as their true shafts have flown. Yeomen, guard your own. His soldier-ridden Highness might incline To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine : Shall we stand idle. Nor seek to bridle His vile aggressions, till we stand alone ? Make their cause your own. Should he land here, and for one hour prevail, There must no man go back to bear the tale : No man to bear it — Swear it ! We swear it ! Although we fought the banded world alone, We swear to guard our own. 77 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XLVIII Hands all Round [Published in The Examiner, February 9, 1852. Reprinted, slightly altered, in Life, Vol. I, p. 345. Included, almost entirely re-written, in collected Works.] First drink a health, this solemn night, A health to England, every guest ; That man's the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best. May Freedom's oak for ever live With stronger life from day to day ; That man's the best Conservative Who lops the mouldered branch away. Hands all round ! God the tyrant's hope confound ! To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England round and round. A health to Europe's honest men ! Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails ! From wronged Poerio's noisome den, From iron limbs and tortured nails ! We curse the crimes of Southern kings. The Russian whips and Austrian rods — We likewise have our evil things ; Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods. Yet hands all round ! 78 CONTRIBUriONS TO PERIODICALS God the tyrant's cause confound ! To Europe's better health we drink, my friends, And the great name of England round and round. What health to France, if France be she Whom martial progress only charms ? Yet tell her — better to be free Ttian vanquish all the world in arms. Her frantic city's flashing heats But fire, to blast the hopes of men. Why change the titles of your streets ? You fools, you'll want them all again. Hands all round ! God the tyrant's cause confound ! To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends. And the great name of England round and round. Gigantic daughter of the West, We drink to thee across the flood. We know thee most, we love thee best, For art thou not of British blood ? Should war's mad blast again be blown. Permit not thou the tyrant powers To fight thy mother here alone. But let thy broadsides roar with ours. Hands all round ! 79 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS God the tyrant's cause confound ! To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends, And the great name of England round and round. O rise, our strong Atlantic sons, When war against our freedom springs ! O speak to Europe through your guns ! They can be understood by kings. You must not mix our Queen with those That wish to keep their people fools ; . Our freedom's foemen are her foes, She comprehends the race she rules. Hands all round ! God the tyrant's cause confound ! To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends, And the great name of England round and round. 80 CONIRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS XLIX Suggested by Reading an Article in a Newspaper [Published in The Examiner, February 14, 1852. This poem has never been acknowledg-ed, nor has it hitherto been identified as by Tennyson. In Life, Vol. I, p. 346, following- the reprint of " Britons, Guard your Own " and '* Hands all Round " (contributed by Tennyson above the signature of Merlin), we are told that : *' Other contributions appeared in The Ex- aminer, but my father did not think them good enough to be reprinted." With this plain hint, the following poem may be de- finitely accepted as from Tennyson's pen]. To the Editor of The Examifier. Sir, — I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good : yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may be induced to admit it. Taliessen. How much I love this writer's manly style ! By such men led, our press had ever been The public conscience of our noble isle, Severe and quick to feel a civic sin. To raise the people and chastise the times With such a heat as lives in great creative rhymes. 81 CONTRIBUrrONS TO PERIODICALS you, the Press ! what good from you might spring ! What power is yours to blast a cause or bless ! 1 fear for you, as for some youthful king, Lest you go wrong from power in excess. Take heed of your wide privileges ! we, The thinking men of England, loathe a tyranny. A freeman is, I doubt not, freest here ; The single voice may speak his mind aloud ; An honest isolation need not fear The Court, the Church, the Parliament, the crowd. No, nor the Press ! and look you well to that— We must not dread in you the nameless autocrat. And you, dark Senate of the public pen. You may not, like yon tyrant, deal in spies. Yours are the public acts of public men, But yours are not their household pri- vacies. I grant you one of the great Powers on earth. But be not you the blatant traitors of the hearth. 82 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS You hide the hand that writes : it must be so, For better so you fight for public ends ; But some you strike can scarce return the blow ; You should be all the nobler, O my friends. Be noble, you ! nor work with faction's tools To charm a lower sphere of fulminating fools. But knowing all your power to heat or cool, To soothe a civic wound or keep it raw, Be loyal, if you wish for wholesome rule : Our ancient boast is this — we reverence law. We still were loyal in our wildest fights, Or loyally disloyal battled for our rights. O Grief and Shame if while I preach of laws Whereby to guard our Freedom from offence — And trust an ancient manhood and the cause Of England and her health of common- sense — There hang within the heavens a dark dis- grace, Some vast Assyrian doom to burst upon our race. 83 CONTRTBUriONS TO PERIODICALS I feel the thousand cankers of our State, I fain would shake their triple-folded ease, The hogs who can believe in nothing great, Sneering bedridden in the down of Peace Over their scrips and shares, their meats and wine, [divine ! With stony smirks at all things human and I honour much, I say, this man's appeal. We drag so deep in our commercial mire, We move so far from greatness, that I feel Exception to be character'd in fire. Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see The British Goddess, sleek Respectability. Alas for her and all her small delights ! She feels not how the social frame is rack'd. She loves a little scandal which excites ; A little feeling is a want of tact. For her there lie in wait millions of foes. And yet the " not too much " is all the rule she knows. Poor soul ! behold her : what decorous calm ! She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed, Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm With decent dippings at the name of Christ ! And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long. She hardly can believe that she shall suffer wrong. 84 CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERIODICALS Alas, our Church ! alas, her growing ills, And those who tolerate not her tolerance, But needs must sell the burthen of their wills To that half-pagan harlot kept by France ! Free subjects of the kindliest of all thrones, Headlong they plunge their doubts among old rags and bones. Alas, Church writers, altercating tribes — The vessel and your Church may sink in storms. Christ cried : Woe, woe, to Pharisees and Scribes ! [forms. Like them, you bicker less for truth than I sorrow when I read the things you write, What unheroic pertness ! what un-Christian spite ! Alas, our youth, so clever yet so small. Thin dilletanti deep in nature's plan, Who make the emphatic One, by whom is all, An essence less concentred than a man ! Better wild Mahmoud's war-cry once again ! fools, we want a manlike God and Godlike men ! Go, frightful omens. Yet once more I turn To you that mould men's thoughts ; I call on you To make opinion warlike, lest we learn A sharper lesson than we ever knew. 1 hear a thunder though the skies are fair, But shrill you, loud and long, the warning- note : Prepare ! 85 THE LOVER'S TALE The Lover's Tale A FRAGMENT [It was orig-inally intended by Tennyson that this poem should form part of his 1833 volume. It was put in type and, according- to custom, copies were distributed among- his friends, when, on the eve of publication, he decided to omit it. Again, in 1869, it was sent to press with a new third part added, and was again withdrawn, the third part only — '' The Golden Supper," founded on a story in Boccaccio's Decameron — being published in the volume, "The Holy Grail" In 1866, 1870 and 1875 attempts had been made by the late Mr Heme Shepherd to publish editions of " The Lover's Tale," reprinted from the stray copies in ex- istence of the 1833 printing. Each of these attempts was repressed by Tennyson, and at last in 1879 the complete poem, as now in- cluded in the collected Works, was issued, with an apologetic reference to the necessity of reprinting the poem to prevent its circu- lation in an unauthorised form. But the 1879 issue is considerably alterec] from the origin- al issue of 1833, as written by Tennyson in his nineteenth year. Since only as a pro- duct of Tennyson's youth does the poem merit attention, it has seemed good to reprint it here as originally written. For a boy of nine- teen it is wonderful : for a man of seventy, as Tennyson was in 1879, ^^ ^^^ little more than twaddle. Better for his reputation had he left it as written in 1828.] 86 rHE LOVER'S TALE The Poem of the Lover's Tale (the lover is sup- posed to be himself a poet) was written in my nineteenth year and consequently contains nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its publication — an apology lame and poor, and somewhat impertinent to boot : so that if its infirmities meet with more laugh- ter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable misgivings that I have ventured to publish even this fragment of it. " Enough," says the old proverb, " is as good as a feast." — [Tennyson's original intro- ductory note.] Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, Filling with purple gloom the vacancies Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas Hung in mid-heaven, and half- way down rare sails. White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky. Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay, Like to a quiet mind in the loud world. Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside. And withers on the breast of peaceful love, Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged The hills that watch'd thee, as Love watcheth Love," — In thine own essence, and delight thyself To make it wholly thine on sunny days. Keep thou thy name of ^' Lover's bay " : See, Sirs, 87 THE LOVERS t:ALE Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes The heart, and sometimes toucheth but one string, That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder'd chords To an old melody, begins to play On those first-moved fibres of the brain. I come, Great mistress of the ear and eye : Oh ! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind Rain thro' my sight, and strangling sorrow weigh Mine utterance with lameness. Tho' long years Have hollowed out a valley and a gulf Betwixt the native land of Love and me, Breathe but a little on me, and the sail Will draw me to the rising of the sun. The lucid chambers of the morning star. And East of life. Permit me, friend, I prithee. To pass my hand across my brows, and muse On those dear hills, that nevermore will meet The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch. As tho' there beat a heart in either eye ; For when the outer lights are darken'd thus. The memory's vision hath a keener edge. It grows upon me now — the semicircle Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe Of curving beach — its wreaths of dripping green — Its pale pink shells — the summer-house aloft 88 THE LOVER'S TALE That open'd on the pines with doors of glass, A mountain nest, the pleasure boat that rock'd Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel, Upon the crispings of the dappled wave, That blanched upon its side. O Love, O Hope, They come, they crowd upon me all at once. Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things, That sometimes on the horizon of the mind Lies folded — often sweeps athwart in storm — They flash across the darkness of my brain. The many pleasant days, the moonlit nights, The dewy dawnings and the amber eves, When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I Were borne about the bay, or safely moor'd Beneath some low brow'd cavern, where the wave Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without. And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine. And shook its earthly socket, for we heard, In rising and in falling with the tide. Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak). Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent ; And mine, with love too high to be express'd Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from All contemplation of all forms, did pause To worship mine own image, laved in light, The centre of the splendours, all unworthy Of such a shrine — mine image in her eyes. By diminution made most glorious, 89 THE LOVER'S TALE Moved with their motions, as those eyes were moved With motions of the soul, as my heart beat Twice to the melody of hers. Her face Was starry-fair, not pale, tenderly flush'd As 'twere with dawn. She was dark-hair'd, dark-eyed ; Oh, such dark eyes ! A single glance of them Will govern a whole life from birth to death, Careless of all things else, led on with light In trances and in visions : look at them, You lose yourself in utter ignorance, You cannot find their depth ; for they go back, And farther back, and still withdraw themselves Quite into the deep soul, that evermore. Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain, Still pouring thro', floods with redundant light Her narrow portals. Trust me, long ago I should have died, if it were possible To die in gazing on that perfectness Which I do bear within me ; I had died But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb, Thineimage, like a charm of light and strength Upon the waters, pushed me back again On these deserted sands of barren life. Tho' from the deep vault, where the heart of hope Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark — Forgetting how to render beautiful Her countenance with quick and healthful blood — 90 rHE LOVER'S TALE Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish With such a costly casket in the grasp Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o'erstepp'd The slippery footing of his narrow wit, And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light, To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers, And length of days, and immortality Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd. For Time and Grief abode too long with Life, And like all other friends i' the world, at last They grew aweary of her fellowship : So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death, And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life ; But thou didst sit alone in the inner house, A wakeful port'ress and didst parle with Death, " This is a charmed dwelling which I hold " ; So Death gave back, and would no further come. Yet is my life nor in the present time. Nor in the present place. To me alone, Push'd from his chair of regal heritage, The Present is the vassal of the Past : So that, in that I have lived, do I live, And cannot die, and am, in having been, A portion of the pleasant yesterday. Thrust forward on to-day and out of place ; A body journeying onward, sick with toil. The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight And all the senses weakened in all, save that 91 THE LOVER* S TALE Which, long ago, they had glean'd and gar- ner'd up Into the granaries of memory — The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain, Now seam'd and chink'd with years — and all the while The light soul twines and mingles with the growths Of vigorous early days, attracted, won, Married, made one with, molten into all The beautiful in Past of act or place. Even as the all-enduring camel, driven Far from the diamond fountain by the palms. Toils onward thro' the middle moonlit nights, Shadow'dandcrimson'd with the drifting dust, Or when the white heats of the blinding noons Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves. To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit From bitterness of death. Ye ask me, friends, When I began to love. How should I tell ye? Or from the after fulness of my heart, Flow back again unto my slender spring And first of love, tho' every turn and depth Between is clearer in my Hfe than all Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask. How should the broad and open flower tell What sort of bud it was, when press'd to- gether 92 THE LOVER'S TALE In its green sheath, close lapt in silken folds? It seemed to keep its sweetness to itself, Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem'd. For young Life knows not when young Life was born, But takes it all for granted : neither Love, Warm in the heart, his cradle can remember Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied. Looking on her that brought him to the light : Or as men know not when they fall asleep Into delicious dreams, our other life, So know I not when I began to love. This is my sum of knowledge — that my love Grew with myself — and say rather, was my growth. My inward sap, the hold I have on earth, My outward circling air wherein I breathe. Which yet upholds my life, and evermore Was to me daily life and daily death : For how should I have lived and not have loved ? Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower. The colour and the sweetness from the rose, And place them by themselves ? or set apart Their motions and their brightness from the stars. And then point out the flower or the star ? Or build a wall betwixt my life and love, And tell me where I am ? 'Tis even thus : 93 THE LOVER'S ^ALE In that I live I love ; because I love I live : whate'er is fountain to the one Is fountain to the other; and whene'er Our God unknits the riddle of the one, There is no shade or fold of mystery Swathing the other. Many, many years, For they seem many and my most of life, And well I could have linger'd in that porch, So unproportioned to the dwelling place, In the maydews of childhood, opposite The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together. Apart, alone together on those hills. Before he saw my day my father died, And he was happy that he saw it not : But I and the first daisy on his grave From the same clay came into light at once. As Love and I do number equal years So she, my love, is of an age with me. How like each other was the birth of each ! The sister of my mother — she that bore Camilla close beneath her beating heart. Which to the imprisoned spirit of the child. With its true touched pulses in the flow And hourly visitation of the blood, Sent notes of preparation manifold, And mellow'd echoes of the outer world — My mother^s sister, mother of my love, Who had a twofold claim upon my heart, One twofold mightier than the other was, In giving so much beauty to the world, 94 THE LOVER'S TALE And so much wealth as God had charged her with, Loathing to put it from herself for ever, Crowned with her highest act the placid face And breathless body of her good deeds past. So we were born, so orphan'd. She was motherless. And I without a father. So from each Of those two pillars which from earth uphold Our childhood, one had fall'n away, and all The careful burthen of our tender years Trembled upon the other. He that gave Her life, to me delightedly fulfill'd All loving-kindnesses, all offices Of watchful care and trembling tenderness. He worked for both : he pray'd for both : he slept Dreaming of both : nor was his love the less Because it was divided, and shot forth Boughs on each side, laden with wholesome shade. Wherein we rested sleeping or awake, And sang aloud the matin-song of life. She was my foster-sister : on one arm The flaxen ringlets of our infancies Wander'd, the while we rested : one soft lap Pillow'd us both : one common light of eyes Was on us as we lay : our baby lips, Kissing one bosom, ever drew from thence The stream of life, one stream, one life, one blood, 95 THE LOVER'S TALE One sustenance, which, still as thought grew large, Still larger moulding all the house of thought, Perchance assimilated all our tastes And future fancies. ' Tis a beautiful And pleasant meditation, what whate'er Our general mother meant for me alone, Our mutual mother dealt to both of us : So what was earliest mine in earliest life, I shared with her in whom m3^self remains. As was our childhood, so our infancy. They tell me, was a very miracle Of fellow-feeling and communion. They tell me that we would not be alone, — We cried when we were parted ; when I wept. Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the clouds of sorrow ; that we loved The sound of one another's voices more Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd To lisp in tune together ; that we slept In the same cradle always, face to face, Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip. Folding each other, breathing on each other, Dreaming together (dreaming of each other They should have added) till the morning light Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke To gaze upon each other. If this be true, 96 THE LOVER'S TALE At thought of which my whole soul lan- guishes And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as the' A man in some still garden should infuse Rich attar in the bosom of the rose. Till, drunk with its own wine, and overfull Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself, It fall on its own thorns — if this be true — And that way my wish leaneth evermore Still to believe it — 'tis so sweet a thought, Why in the utter stillness of the soul Doth question'd memory answer not, nor tell, Of this our earliest, our closest drawn, Most loveliest, most delicious union ? Oh, happy, happy outset of my days ! Green springtide, April promise, glad new year Of Being, which with earliest violets, And lavish carol of clear-throated larks, Fill'd all the march of life. — I will not speak of thee : These have not seen thee, these can never know thee. They cannot understand me. Pass on then A term of eighteen years. Ye would but laugh If I should tell ye how I heard in thought Those rhymes, " The Lion and the Unicorn " "The Four-and-twenty Blackbirds" '^ Ban- bury Cross," " The Gander " and " The man of Mitylene," 97 rHE LOVER'S TALE And all the quaint old scraps of ancient crones, Which are as gems set in my memory, Because she learn'd them with me. Or what profits it To tell ye that her father died, just ere The daffodil was blown; or how we found The drowned seaman on the shore? These things Unto the quiet daylight of your minds Are cloud and smoke, but in the dark of mine Show traced with flame. Move with me to that hour, Which was the hinge on which the door of Hope, Once turning, open'd far into the outward, And never closed again. I well remember. It was a glorious morning, such a one As dawns but once a season, Mercury On such a morning would have flung himself From cloud to cloud, and swum with bal- anced wings To some tall mountain. On that day the year First felt his youth and strength, and from his spring Moved smiling toward his summer. On that day, Love working shook his wings (that charged the winds THE LOVER'S TALE With spiced May-sweets from bound to bound) and blew Fresh fire into the sun, and from within Burst thro' the heated buds, and sent his soul Into the songs of birds, and touch'd far-off His mountain-altars, his high hills, with flame Milder and purer. Up the rocks we wound ; The great pine shook with lovely sounds of That came on the sea-wind. A.s mountain brooks Our blood ran free : the sunshine seem'd to brood More warmly on the heart than on the brow. We often paused, and looking back, we saw The clefts and openings in the hills all fiird With the blue valley and the glistening brooks, And with the low dark groves — a land of Love j Where Love was worshipp'd upon every height, Where Love was worshipp'd under every tree — A land of promise, flowing with the milk And honey of delicious memories Down to the sea, as far as eye could ken. From verge to verge it was a holy land, 99 THE LOVER'S TALE Still growing holier as you near'd the bay, For where the temple stood. When we had reach'd The grassy platform on some hill, I stoop'd, I gather'd the wild herbs, and for her brows And mine wove chaplets of the self-same flower. Which she took smiling, and with my work there Crown'd her clear forehead. Once or twice she told me (For I remember all things), to let grow The flowers that run poison in their veins. She said, " The evil flourish in the world " ; Then playfully she gave herself the lie : " Nothing in nature is unbeautiful. So, brother, pluck and spare not." So I wove Even the dull blooded poppy, "whose red flower Hued with the scarlet of a fierce sunrise, Like to the wild youth of an evil king. Is without sweetness, but who crowns him- self Above the secret poisons of his heart In his old age " — a graceful thought of hers Graven on my fancy ! As I said, with these She crown'd her forehead. O how like a nymph, A stately mountain-nymph, she look'd ! how native [angel ! Unto the hills she trod on ! What an 1 00 THE LOVER'S TALE How clothed with beams ! My eyes, fix'd upon hers, Almost forgot even to move again. My spirit leap'd as with those thrills of bliss That shoot across the soul in prayer, and show us That we are surely heard. Methought a light [stood Burst from the garland I had woven, and A solid glory on her bright black hair : A light, methought, broke from her dark, dark eyes, And shot itself into the singing winds ; A light, methought, flash'd even from her white robe. As from a glass in the sun, and fell about My* footsteps on the mountains. About sunset We came unto the hill of woe, so call'd Because the legend ran that, long time since. One rainy night, when every wind blew loud, A woful man had thrust his wife and child With shouts from off the bridge, and following, plunged Into the dizzy chasm below. Below, Sheer thro' the black-wall'd cHff the rapid brook Shot down his inner thunders, built above With matted bramble and the shining gloss Of ivy-leaves, whose low-hung tresses, dipp'd In the fierce stream, bore downward with the wave. lOI THE LOVER'S rALE The path was steep and loosely strewn with crags. We mounted slowly : yet to both of us It was delight, not hindrance : unto both Delight from hardship to be overcome, And scorn of perilous seeming : unto me Intense delight and rapture that I breathed, As with a sense of nigher Deity, With her to whom all outward fairest things Were by the busy mind referr'd, compared, As bearing no essential fruits of excellence. Save as they were the types and shadowings Of hers — and then that I became to her A tutelary angel as she rose, And with a fearful self-impelling joy Saw round her feet the country far away, Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows, Burst into open prospect — heath and hill. And hollow hned and wooded to the lips — And steep-down walls of battlemented rock Girded with broom or shiver'd into peaks — And glory of broad waters interfused. Whence rose as it were breath and steam of gold ; And over all the great wood rioting And climbing, starr'd at slender intervals With blossom tufts of purest white; and last, Framing the mighty landskip to the West, A purple range of purple cones, between Whose interspaces gush'd, in blinding bursts. The incorporate light of sun and sea. 102 THE LOVER'S TALE At length, Upon the tremulous bridge, that from be- neath Seemed with a cobweb firmament to link The earthquake-shattered chasm, hung with shrubs, We passed with tears of rapture. All the West, And even unto the middle South, was ribb'd And barr'd with bloom on bloom. The sun beneath. Held for a space 'twixt cloud and wave, shower'd down Rays of a mighty circle, weaving over That varied wilderness a tissue of light Unparallel'd. On the other side the moon, Half-melted into thin blue air, stood still And pale and fibrous as a wither'd leaf, Nor yet endured in presence of his eyes To imbue his lustre ; most unloverlike j Since in his absence full of Hght and joy And giving light to others. But this chiefest, Next to her presence whom I loved so well, Spoke loudly, even into my inmost heart. As to my outward hearing : the loud stream, P'orth issuing from his portals in the crag (A visible link unto the home of my heart). Ran amber toward the West, and nigh the sea, Parting my own loved mountains, was re- ceived. Shorn of its strength, into the sympathy 103 THE LOVER'S TALE Of that small bay, which into open main Glow'd intermingling close beneath the sun Spirit of Love ! That little hour was bound, Shut in from Time, and dedicate to thee ; Thy fires from heaven had touch'd it, and the earth They fell on became hallow'd evermore. We turn'd : our eyes met : her's were bright, and mine [sunset Were dim with floating tears, that shot the In light rings round me ; and my name was borne Upon her breath. Henceforth my name has been A hallow'd memory, like the names of old ; A center'd, glory-circled memory. And a peculiar treasure, brooking not Exchange or currency ; and in that hour A hope flow'd round me, like a golden mist Charm'd amid eddies of melodious airs, A moment, ere the onward whirlwind shat- ter it, Waver'd and floated — which was less than Hope, Because it lack'd the power of perfect Hope ; But which was more and higher than all Hope, Because all other Hope hath lower aim ; Even that this name to which her seraph lips Did lend such gentle utterance, this one name In some obscure hereafter, might inwreathe 104 THE LOVER'S TALE (How lovelier, nobler then!) her life, her love, With my life, love, soul, spirit and heart and strength. " Brother," she said, " let this be call'd hence- forth The Hill of Hope"; and I replied: *'0 sister, My will is one with thine ; the Hill of Hope." Nevertheless, we did not change the name. Love lieth deep ; Love dwells not in lip- depths : Love wraps her wings on either side the heart. Constraining it with kisses close and warm, Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts So that they pass not to the shrine of sound. Else had the life of that delighted hour Drunk in the largeness of the utterance Of Love; but how should earthly measure mete The heavenly unmeasured or unlimited Love, Which scarce can tune his high majestic sense Unto the thunder-song that wheels the spheres ; Scarce living in the ^^olian harmony, And flowing odour of the spacious air ; Scarce housed in the circle of this earth : Be cabin'd up in words and syllables, Which waste with the breath that made 'em. 105 THE LOVER'S TALE Sooner earth Might go round heaven, and the straight girth of Time Inswathe the fullness of Eternity, Than language grasp the infinite of Love. O day, which did enwomb that happy hour, Thou art blessed in the years, divinest day ! Genius of that hour which dost uphold Thy coronal of glory Uke a God, Amid thy melancholy mates far-seen. Who walk before thee, and whose eyes are dim With gazing on the light and depth of thine Thy name is ever worshipp'd among hours ! Had I died then, I had not seem'd to die For bliss stood round me like the lights of heaven, That cannot fade, they are so burning bright. Had I died then, I had not known the death ; Planting my feet against this mound of time 1 had thrown me on the vast, and from this impulse Continuing and gathering ever, ever, Agglomerated swiftness, I had lived That intense moment thro' eternity. Oh, had the Power from whose right hand the light Of Life issueth, and from whose left hand floweth The shadow of Death, perennial effluences, 106 rUE LOVER'S TALE Whereof to all that draw the wholesome air, Somewhile the one must overflow the other ; Then had he stemm'd my day with night and driven My current to the fountain whence it sprang — Even his own abiding excellence — On me, methinks, that shock of gloom had fall'n Unfelt, and like the sun I gazed upon. Which, lapt in seeming dissolution, And dipping his head low beneath the verge, Yet bearing round about him his own day, In confidence of unbated strength, Steppeth from heaven to heaven, from light to light. And holdeth his undimmed forehead far Into a clearer zenith, pure of cloud ; So bearing on thro' Being limitless The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged Glory in glory, without sense of change. We trod the shadow of the downward hill ; We pass'd from Hght to dark. On the other side Is scooped a cavern and a mountain-hall, Which none have fathom'd. If you go far in, (The country people rumour) you may hear The moaning of the woman and the child, Shut in the secret chambers of the rock. I too have heard a sound — perchance of streams 107 THE LOVERS T^LE Running far-off within its inmost halls, The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth, Half overtrailed with a wanton weed Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly Adown a natural stair of tangled roots. Is presently received in a sweet grove Of eglantine, a place of burial Far lovelier than its cradle ; for unseen, But taken with the sweetness of the place, It giveth out a constant melody That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, makes Cushions of yellow sand ; and from the woods That belt it rise three dark tall cypresses j Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe, That men plant over graves. Hither we came. And sitting down upon the golden moss Held converse sweet and low — low converse sweet. In which our voices bore least part. The wind Told a love-tale beside us, how he woo'd The waters, and the crisped waters lisp'd The kisses of the wind, that, sick with love, Fainted at intervals, and grew again 1 08 THE LOVER'S TALE To Utterance of passion. Ye cannot shape Fancy so fair as is this memory. Methought all excellence that ever was Had drawn herself from many thousand years, And all the separate Edens of this earth, To centre in this place and time. I listen'd, And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness Into my heart, as thronged fancies come, All unawares, into the poet's brain ; Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung, When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs, Creep down into the bottom of the flower. Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms Strung in the very negligence of Art, Or in the art of Nature, where each rose Doth faint upon the bosom of the other. Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears. So each with each inwoven lived with each, And were in union more than double- sweet. What marvel my Camilla told me all ? It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place. And I was as the brother of her blood. And by that name was wont to live in her speech, Dear name ! which had too much of near- ness in it. 109 THE LOVER*S TALE And heralded the distance of this time At first her voice was very sweet and low, As tho' she were afeard of utterance ; But in the onward current of her speech, (As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks Are fashioned by the channel which they keep) His words did of their meaning borrow sound, Her cheek did catch the colour of her words, I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear ; My heart paused, — my raised eyelids would not fall, But still I kept my eyes upon the sky. I seem'd the only part of Time stood still. And saw the motion of all other things ; While her words, syllable by syllable. Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear Fell, and I wish'd, yet wish'd her not to speak. But she spoke on, for I did name no wish. What marvel my Camilla told me all Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love, "Perchance" she said *'return'd." Even then the stars Did tremble in their stations as I gazed ; But she spake on, for I did name no wish, No wish — no hope. Hope was not wholly dead. But breathing hard at the approach of Death, Updrawn in expectation of her change — Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine THE LOVER'S TALE No longer in the dearest use of mine — The written secrets of her inmost soul Lay like an open scroll before my view, And my eyes read, they read aright, her heart Was Lionel's : it seem'd as tho' a link Of some light chain within my inmost frame Was riven in twain : that life I heeded not Flow'd from me, and the darkness of the grave, The darkness of the grave and utter night, Did swallow up my vision : at her feet, Even the feet of her I loved, I fell, Smit with exceeding sorrow unto death. Then had the earth beneath me yawning given Sign of convulsion : and tho' horrid rifts Sent up the moaning of unhappy spirits Imprisoned in her centre, with the heat Of their infolding element ; had the angels. The watchers at heaven's gate, push'd them apart. And from the golden threshold had down- roll'd Their heaviest thunder, I had lain as still, And blind and motionless as then I lay ! AVhite as quench'd ashes, cold as were the hopes Of my lorn love ! What happy air shall woo The wither'd leaf fall'n in the woods, or blasted III rHE LOVERS TALE Upon this bough? a lightning stroke had come Even from that Heaven in whose light I bloom'd And taken away the greenness of my life, The blossom and the fragrance. Who was cursed But I ? who miserable but I ? even Misery Forgot herself in that extreme distress, And with the overdoing of her part Did fall away into oblivion. The night in pity took away my day Because my grief as yet was newly born, Of too weak eyes to look upon the light. And with the hasty notice of the ear. Frail Life was startled from the tender love Of him she brooded over. Would I had lain Until the pleached ivy tress had wound Round my worn limbs, and the wild briar had driven Its knotted thorns thro' my unpaining brows Leaning its roses on my faded eyes. The wind had blown above me, and the rain Had fall'n upon me, and the gilded snake Had nestled in this bosomthrone of love. But I had been at rest for evermore. Long time entrancement held me : all too soon, Life (like a wanton too-officious friend II2 THE LOVER'S TALE Who will not hear denial, vain and rude With proffer of unwished for services) Entering all the avenues of sense, Pass'd thro into his citadel, the brain With hated warmth of apprehensiveness : And first the chillness of the mountain stream Smote on my brow, and then I seem'd to hear Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears, Who with his head below the surface dropt, Listens the dreadful murmur indistinct Of the confused seas, and knoweth not Beyond the sound he lists : and then came in O'erhead the white light of the weary moon. Diffused and molten into flaky cloud. Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to me Him who should own that name? or had my fancy So lethargised discernment in the sense, That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes. Warping their nature, till they minister'd Unto her swift conceits? 'Twere better thus If so be that the memory of that sound With mighty evocation, had updrawn The fashion and the phantasm of the form It should attach to. There was no such thing. — It was the man she loved, even Lionel, The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel, 113 THE LOVER'S TALE All joy ; who drew the happy atmosphere Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears, To him the honey dews of orient hope. Oh ! rather had some loathly ghastful brow, Half-bursten from the shroud, in cere cloth bound, The dead skin withering on the fretted bone, The very spirit of Paleness made still paler By the shuddering moonlight, fix'd his eyes on mine Horrible with the anger and the heat Of the remorseful soul alive within, And damn'd unto his loathed tenement. Methinks I could have sooner met that gaze ! Oh, how her choice did leap forth from his eyes ! Oh, how her love did clothe itself in smiles About his lips ! This was the very arch-mock And insolence of uncontrolled Fate, When the effect weigh'd seas upon my head To twit me with the cause. Why how was this ? Could he not walk what paths he chose, nor breathe What airs he pleased ? Was not the wide earth free, With all her interchange of hill and plain To him as well as me ? I know not, faith : But Misery, like a fretful, wayward child, Refused to look his author in the face, Must he come my way too ? Was not the South, 114 THE LOFER'S TALE The East, the West, all open, if he had falPn In love in twilight ? Why should he come my way. Robed in those robes of light I must not wear, With that great crown of beams about his brows ? Come like an angel to a damned soul ? To tell him of the bliss he had with God ; Come Hke a careless and a greedy heir, That scarce can wait the reading of the will Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood To be invaded rudely, and not rather A sacred, secret, unapproached woe Unspeakable ? I was shut up with grief ; She took the body of my past delight, Narded, and swathed and balm'd it for her- self, And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre. Where man had never lain. I was led mute Into her temple like a sacrifice ; I was the high-priest in her hoHest place, Not to be loudly broken in upon. Oh ! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh O'erbore the limits of my brain ; but he Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd From earth. I thought it was an adder's fold. And once I strove to disengage myself. But fail'd, I was so feeble. She was there too : She bent above me too : her cheek was pale, 115 THE LOVER'S lALE Oh ! very fair and pale : rare pity had stolen The living bloom away, as tho' a red rose Should change into a white one suddenly. Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn, And some few drops of that distressful rain Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight, And being there they did break forth afresh In a new birth, immingled with my own. And still bewept my grief. Keeping un- changed The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets, Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind, Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro : For in the sudden anguish of her heart Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad. And onward floating in a full, dark wave, Parted on either side her argent neck, Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke, After my refluent health made tender quest Unanswered, for I spoke not : for the sound Of that dear voice so musically low, And now first heard with any sense of pain. As it had taken life away before, Choked all the syllables that in my throat Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks, From my full heart: and ever since that hour, My voice hath somewhat faltered — and what wonder Ii6 THE LOVER^S lALE That when hope died, part of her eloquence Died with her ? He, the blissful lover, too, From his great hoard of happiness distill'd Some drops of solace ; like a vain rich man, That, having always prosper'd in the world, Folding his hands, deals comfortable words To hearts wounded for ever ; yet, in truth. Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase, Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd More to the inward than the outward ear, As rain of the midsummer midnight soft Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green Of the dead spring — such as in other minds Had film'd the margents of the recent wound. And why was I to darken their pure love, If, as I knew, they two did love each other. Because my own was darken'd ? Why was I To stand within the level of their hopes. Because my hope was widow'd, like the cur In the child's adage ? Did I love Camilla ? Ye know that I did love her : to this present My full-orb'd love hath waned not. Did I love her, And could I look upon her tearful eyes ? Tears wept for me ; for me — weep at my grief? What had she done to weep — let my heart Break rather — whom the gentlest airs of heaven Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness. 117 7HE LOVER'S TALE Her love did murder mine ; what then ? she deem'd I wore a brother's mind : she call'd me brother : She told me all her love : she shall not weep. The brightness of a burning thought awhile Battailing with the glooms of my dark will, Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself, Upon the depth of an unfathom'd woe, Reflex of action. Starting up at once, As men do from a vague and horrid dream, And throwing by all consciousness of self. In eager haste I shook him by the hand ; Then flinging myself down upon my knees Even where the grass was warm where I had lain, I pray'd aloud to God that he would hold The hand of blessing over Lionel, And her whom he would make his wedded wife, Camilla ! May their days be golden days, And their long life a dream of linked love. From which may rude Death never startle them, But grow upon them like a glorious vision Of unconceived and awful happiness. Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and sounds, Swallowing its precedent in victory. Let them so love that men and boys may say, Lo ! how they love each other 1 till their love Ii8 rHE LOVER S TALE Shall ripen to a proverb unto all, Known when their faces are forgot in the land. And as for me, Camilla, as for me, Think not thy tears will make my name grow green,— The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew. The course of Hope is dried, — the life o' the plant — They will but sicken the sick plant more. Deem then I love thee but as brothers do, So shalt thou love me still as sisters do ; Or if thou dream'st aught farther, dream but how I could have loved thee, had there been none else To love as lovers, loved again by thee. Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spoke, When I did see her weep so ruefully ; For sure my love should ne'er induce the front And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans Feed and envenom, as the milky blood Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts. And batten on his poisons ? Love forbid ! Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears 119 THE LOVER'S TALE Shed for the love of Love ; for tho' mine image, The subject of thy power, be cold in her, Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow. So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death. Received unto himself a part of blame. Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner, Who when the woful sentence hath been past, And all the clearness of his fame hath gone Beneath the shadow of the curse of men, First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom awaked And looking round upon his tearful friends, Forthwith and in his agony conceives A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime — For whence without some guilt should such grief be ? So died that hour, and fell into the abysm Of forms outworn, but not to me outworn, Who never hail'd another worth the Life That made it sensible. So died that hour, Like odour rapt into the winged wind Borne into alien lands and far away. There be some hearts so airy-fashioned, That in the death of love, if e'er they loved. On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly Above the perilous seas of change and chance ; Nay, more, hold out the lights of cheerful- ness j 120 THE LOVER'S lALE As the tall ship, that many a dreary year Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea, All through the lifelong hours of utter dark. Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave. For me all other Hopes did sway from that Which hung the frailest : falling, they fell too, Crush'd link on link into the beaten earth. And Love did walk with banish'd Hope no more. It was ill-done to part ye, Sisters fair ; Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope, And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath In that close kiss, and drank her whisper'd tales. They said that Love would die when Hope was gone, And Love mourned long, and sorrow'd after Hope ; At last she sought out memory, and they trod The same old paths where Love had w^alked with Hope, And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears. II From that time forth I would not see her more. But many weary moons I lived alone — Alone, and in the heart of the great forest. rHE LOVER'S lALE Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea All day I watched the floating isles of shade, And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands Insensibly I drew her name, until The meaning of the letters shot into My brain : anon the wanton billow washed Them over, till they faded like my love. The hollow caverns heard me — the black brooks Of the mid-forest heard me — the soft winds, Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers, Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice Was all of thee : the merry linnet knew me. The squirrel knew me, and the dragon-fly Shot by me like a flash of purple fire. The rough briar tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock. Brow high, did strike my forehead as I pas'd ; Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path, Nor bruised the wild bird's egg. Was this the end? Why grew we then together i' the same plot ? Why fed we the same fountain? drew the same sun ? Why were our mothers branches of one stem ? Why were we one in all things, save in that Where to have been one had been the roof and crown Of all I hoped and fear'd ? if that same nearness Were father to this distance, and that one THE LOVEWS rALE Vauntcourier this double ? If Affection Living slew Love, and Sympathy hew'd out The bosom-sepulchre of Sympathy. Chiefly I sought the cavern and the hill Where last we roam'd together, for the sound Of the loud stream was pleasant, and the wind Came wooingly with violet smells. Sometimes All day I sat within the cavern-mouth. Fixing my eyes on those three cypress-cones Which spired above the wood; and with mad hand Tearing the bright leaves of the ivy-screen, I cast them in the noisy brook beneath, And watch'd them till they vanished from my sight Beneath the bower of wreathed eglantines : And all the fragments of the living rock, (Huge splinters, which the sap of earliest showers. Or moisture of the vapour, left in clinging. When the shrill storm-blast feeds it from behind. And scatters it before, had shatter'd from The mountain, till they fell, and with theshock Half dug their own graves), in mine agony, Did I make bare of all the deep rich moss Wherewith the dashing runnel in the spring Had liveried them all over. In my brain The spirit seem'd to flag from thought to thought, [my blood Like moonlight wandering through a mist : 123 7 HE LOVER'S 7 ALE Crept like the drains of a marsh thro' all my body; The motions of myheartseem'd far within me, Unfrequent, low, as tho' it told its pulses ; And yet it shook me, that my frame did shudder, As it were drawn asunder by the rack. But over the deep graves of Hope and Fear, The wreck of ruin'd life and shatter'd thought, Brooded one master-passion evermore, Like to a low hung and a fiery sky Above some great metropolis, earth shock'd Hung round with ragged-rimmed burning folds, Embathing all with wild and woful hues — Great hills of ruins, and collapsed masses Of thunder-shaken columns, indistinct And fused together in the tyrannous light. So gazed I on the ruins of that thought Which was the playmate of my youth — for which I lived and breathed : the dew, the sun, the rain, Unto the growth of body and of mind; The blood, the breath, the feeling and the motion, The slope into the current of my years. Which drove them onward — made them sen- sible ; The precious jewel of my honoured life, Erewhile close couch'd in golden happiness, 124 THE LOVER'S 7^LE Now proved counterfeit, was shaken out, And, trampled on, left to its own decay. Sometimes I thought Camilla was no more. Some one had told me she was dead, and ask'd me If I would see her burial : then I seem'd To rise, and thro' the forest-shadow borne With more than mortal swiftness, I ran down The steepy sea-bank, till I came upon The rear of a procession, curving round The silver-sheeted bay : in front of which Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn, Wreathed round the bier with garlands : in the distance, From out the yellow woods, upon the hill, Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry. Save those six virgins which upheld the bier. Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black ; One walk'd abreast with me, and veiled his brow. And he was loud in weeping and in praise Of the departed : a strong sympathy Shook all my soul : I flung myself upon him In tears and cries : I told him all my love, How I had loved her from the first ; whereat He shrunk and howl'd, and from his brow drew back 125 THE LOVER'S TALE His hand to push me from him ; and the face, The very face and form of Lionel, [brain, Flash'd through my eyes into my innermost And at his feet I seem'd to faint and fall, To fall and die away. I could not rise, Albeit I strove to follow. They pass'd on. The lordly Phantasms ; in their floating folds They pass'd and were no more : but I had fall'n Prone by the dashing runnel on the grass. Always th' inaudible, invisible thought Artificer and subject, lord and slave Shaped by the audible and visible. Moulded the audible and visible ; All crisped sounds of wave, and leaf and wind, Flatter'd the fancy of my fading brain ; The storm-pavilion'd element, the wood, The mountain, the three cypresses, the cave, Were wrought into the tissue of my dream. The moanings in the forest, the loud stream. Awoke me not, but were a part of sleep ; And voices in the distance, calling to me. And in my vision bidding me dream on, Like sounds within the twilight realms of dreams. Which wander round the bases of the hills, And murmur in the low-dropt eaves of sleep, 126 THE LOVER'S TALE But faint within the portals. Oftentimes The vision had fair prelude, in the end Opening on darkness, stately vestibules To cares and shows of Death ; whether the mind, With a revenge even to itself unknown, Made strange division of its suffering With her, whom to have suffering view'd had been Extremest pain; or that the clear-eyed Spirit, Being blasted in the Present, grew at length Prophetical and prescient of whate'er The Future had in store ; or that which most Enchains belief, the sorrow of my spirit Was of so wide a compass it took in All I had loved, and my dull agony, Ideally to her transferr'd, became Anguish intolerable. The day waned ; Alone I sat with her : about my brow Her warm breath floated in the utterance Of silver-chorded tones : her lips were sun- der'd With smiles of tranquil bliss, which broke in light Like morning from her eyes— her eloquent eyes (As I have seen them many hundred times), Fill'd all with clear pure fire, thro' mine down rain'd 127 THE LOVER'S lALE Their spirit-searching splendours. As a vision Unto a haggard prisoner, iron-stay'd In damp and dismal dungeons underground Confined on points of faith, when strength is shock'd With torment, and expectancy of worse Upon the morrow, thro' the ragged walls. All unawares before his half-shut eyes. Comes in upon him in the dead of night, And with th' excess of sweetness and of awe. Makes the heart tremble, and the eyes run over Upon his steely gyves ; so those fair eyes Shone on my darkness forms which ever stood Within the magic cirque of memory, Invisible but deathless, waiting still The edict of the will to reassume The semblance of those rare realities Of which they were the mirrors. Now the light, Which was their life, burst through the cloud of thought Keen, irrepressible. It was a room Within the summer-house of which I spoke. Hung round with paintings of the sea, and one A vessel in mid-ocean, her heaved prow Clambering, the mast bent, and the revin wind In her sail roaring. From the outer day, Betwixt the closest ivies came a broad And solid beam of isolated light, 128 THE LOVER'S rALE Crowded with driving atomies, and fell Slanting upon that picture, from prime youth Well-known, well-loved. She drew it long ago Forth gazing on the waste and open sea, One morning when the upblown billow ran Shoreward beneath red clouds, and I had pour'd Into the shadowing pencil's naked forms Colour and life : it was a bond and seal Of friendship, spoken of with tearful smiles ; A monument of childhood and of love, The poesy of childhood ; my lost love Symbol'd in storm. We gazed on it together In mute and glad remembrance, and each heart Grew closer to the other, and the eye Was riveted and charm-bound, gazing like The Indian on a still-eyed snake, low crouch'd A beauty which is death, when all at once That painted vessel, as with inner life, 'Gan rock and heave upon that painted sea ; An earthquake, my loud heartbeats, made the ground Roll under us, and all at once soul, life. And breath, and motion, pass'd and flow'd away ^ To those unreal billows : round and round A whirlwind caught and bore us ; mighty gyves, Rapid and vast, of hissing spray wind-driven 129 THE LOVER'S TALE Far through the dizzy dark. Aloud she shriek'd — My heart was cloven with pain. I wound my arms About her : we whirl'd giddily : the wind Sung : but I clasp'd her without fear : her weight Shrank in my grasp, and over my dim eyes And parted lips which drank her breath, down hung The jaws of Death : I, screaming, from me flung The empty phantom : all the sway and whirl Of the storm dropt to windless calm, and I Down welter'd thro' the dark ever and ever. 130 APOCRYPHAL POEMS Apocryphal Poems All the poems printed in the preceding- pages may be definitely accepted as written by Tennyson. There are however some few other poems, printed in stray publications and volumes, which have been assigned to Tennyson on the slender- est evidence, or on none at all. Mr Shepherd in his Bibliography (1886) attributes to Tenny- son a poem published in Punch in 1878, ot which the first stanza is : " Hast forgot Britain " ? Blatant buncombe shapes A Britain generous Britons would disown ; A mock-Britannia, whose stage ermine drapes A sham, of selfish frothiness upblown. The truest lover of his land is not The tap room patriot of the pipe and pot. A VOLUME of Tennyson's poems, published in 1871 by Robbers of Amsterdam, contains a poem purporting to be a sequel to Lady Clara Vere de Vere. It begins : Dear Lady Clara Vere de Vere, How strange with you once more to meet. To hold your hand, to hear your voice, To sit beside you on this seat ! You mind the time we sat here last ? — Two little children, — lovers we, Each loving each with simple faith — I all to you — you all to me. APOCRTPHAL POEMS In the West Briton of August 19, 1897, there was published a poem attributed to Tennyson, re- printed from All the Year Round for October, 1864. It is supposed to have been written by Tennyson during a visit to Cornwall in i860. But with a fairly complete knowledge of Tenny- son at his worst — and at his worst Tennyson could be bad indeed ! — the editor of the Book- let hesitates to assign to him the guilt of such doggerel as this : Hast thou ever in a travel Through the Cornish lands, Heard the great Atlantic roaring On the firm wide tawny flooring Of the Perran sands ? 132 3^4