O Lord, Lord,

Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,

For I was strong and hale of body then;

And tho’ my teeth, which now are dropt away,

Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard

Was tagg’d with icy fringes in the moon,

I drown’d the whoopings of the owl with sound

Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw

An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.

Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh;

I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,

So that I scarce can hear the people hum

About the column’s base, and almost blind,

And scarce can recognise the fields I know;

And both my thighs are rotted with the dew;

Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,

While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,

Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?

Show me the man hath suffered more than I.

For did not all thy martyrs die one death?

For either they were stoned, or crucified,

Or burn’d in fire, or boil’d in oil, or sawn

In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here

To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.

Bear witness, if I could have found a way

(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)

More slowly-painful to subdue this home

Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,

I had not stinted practice, O my God.

For not alone this pillar-punishment,[1]

Not this alone I bore: but while I lived

In the white convent down the valley there,

For many weeks about my loins I wore

The rope that haled the buckets from the well,

Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;

And spake not of it to a single soul,

Until the ulcer, eating thro’ my skin,

Betray’d my secret penance, so that all

My brethren marvell’d greatly. More than this

I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.[2]

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee,

I lived up there on yonder mountain side.

My right leg chain’d into the crag, I lay

Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;

Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice

Black’d with thy branding thunder, and sometimes

Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not,

Except the spare chance-gift of those that came

To touch my body and be heal’d, and live:

And they say then that I work’d miracles,

Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,

Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,

Knowest alone whether this was or no.

Have mercy, mercy; cover all my sin.

Then, that I might be more alone with thee,[3]

Three years I lived upon a pillar, high

Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve;

And twice three years I crouch’d on one that rose

Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew

Twice ten long weary weary years to this,

That numbers forty cubits from the soil.

I think that I have borne as much as this—

Or else I dream—and for so long a time,

If I may measure time by yon slow light,

And this high dial, which my sorrow crowns—

So much—even so.

And yet I know not well,

For that the evil ones comes here, and say,

“Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffer’d long

For ages and for ages!” then they prate

Of penances I cannot have gone thro’,

Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall,

Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies,

That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked.

But yet

Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints

Enjoy themselves in Heaven, and men on earth

House in the shade of comfortable roofs,

Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,

And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,

I, ’tween the spring and downfall of the light,

Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,

To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints;

Or in the night, after a little sleep,

I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet

With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.

I wear an undress’d goatskin on my back;

A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;

And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross,

And strive and wrestle with thee till I die:

O mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.

O Lord, thou knowest what a man I am;

A sinful man, conceived and born in sin:

’Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;

Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,

That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!

They think that I am somewhat. What am I?

The silly people take me for a saint,

And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:

And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here)

Have all in all endured as much, and more

Than many just and holy men, whose names

Are register’d and calendar’d for saints.

Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.

What is it I can have done to merit this?

I am a sinner viler than you all.

It may be I have wrought some miracles,[4]

And cured some halt and maim’d; but what of that?

It may be, no one, even among the saints,

May match his pains with mine; but what of that?

Yet do not rise: for you may look on me,

And in your looking you may kneel to God.

Speak! is there any of you halt or maim’d?

I think you know I have some power with Heaven

From my long penance: let him speak his wish.

Yes, I can heal. Power goes forth from me.

They say that they are heal’d. Ah, hark! they shout

“St. Simeon Stylites”. Why, if so,

God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,

God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,

Can I work miracles and not be saved?

This is not told of any. They were saints.

It cannot be but that I shall be saved;

Yea, crown’d a saint. They shout, “Behold a saint!”

And lower voices saint me from above.

Courage, St. Simeon! This dull chrysalis

Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere death

Spreads more and more and more, that God hath now

Sponged and made blank of crimeful record all

My mortal archives.

O my sons, my sons,

I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname Stylites, among men;

I, Simeon, The watcher on the column till the end;

I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes;

I, whose bald brows in silent hours become

Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now

From my high nest of penance here proclaim

That Pontius and Iscariot by my side

Show’d like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay,

A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath

Made me boil over. Devils pluck’d my sleeve;[5]

Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me.

I smote them with the cross; they swarm’d again.

In bed like monstrous apes they crush’d my chest:

They flapp’d my light out as I read: I saw

Their faces grow between me and my book:

With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine

They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left,

And by this way I’scaped them. Mortify

Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns;

Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast

Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps,

With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain,

Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still

Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise:

God only thro’ his bounty hath thought fit,

Among the powers and princes of this world,

To make me an example to mankind,

Which few can reach to. Yet I do not say

But that a time may come—yea, even now,

Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs

Of life—I say, that time is at the doors

When you may worship me without reproach;

For I will leave my relics in your land,

And you may carve a shrine about my dust,

And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,

When I am gather’d to the glorious saints.

While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain

Ran shrivelling thro’ me, and a cloudlike change,

In passing, with a grosser film made thick

These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end!

Surely the end! What’s here? a shape, a shade,

A flash of light. Is that the angel there

That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come,

I know thy glittering face. I waited long;

My brows are ready. What! deny it now?

Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ!

’Tis gone: ’tis here again; the crown! the crown![6]

So now ’tis fitted on and grows to me,

And from it melt the dews of Paradise,

Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense.

Ah! let me not be fool’d, sweet saints: I trust

That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.

Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,

Among you there, and let him presently

Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,

And climbing up into my airy home,

Deliver me the blessed sacrament;

For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,

I prophesy that I shall die to-night,

A quarter before twelve.[7] But thou, O Lord,

Aid all this foolish people; let them take

Example, pattern: lead them to thy light.

[1] For this incident _cf. Acta_, v., 317:

“Petit aliquando ab aliquo ad se invisente funem, acceptumque circa

corpus convolvit constringitque tam arete ut, exesâ carne, quæ istuc

mollis admodum ac tenera est, nudæ costæ exstarent”.

The same is told also of the younger Stylites, where the incident of

concealing the torture is added, _Acta_, i., 265.

[2] For this retirement to a mountain see _Acta_, i., 270, and it is

referred to in the other lives:

“Post hæc egressus occulte perrexit in montem non longe a monasterio,

ibique sibi clausulam de siccâ petrâ fecit, et stetit sic annos tres.”

[3] In accurate accordance with the third life, _Acta_, i., 277:

“Primum quidem columna ad sex erecta cubitos est, deinde ad duodecim,

post ad vigenti extensa est”;

but for the thirty-six cubits which is assigned as the height of the

last column Tennyson’s authority, drawing on another account (_Id._,

271), substitutes forty:

“Fecerunt illi columnam habentem cubitos quadraginta”.

[4] For the miracles wrought by him see all the lives.

[5] These details seem taken from the well-known stories about Luther

and Bunyan. All that the _Acta_ say about St. Simeon is that he was

pestered by devils.

[6] The _Acta_ say nothing about the crown, but dwell on the

supernatural fragrance which exhaled from the saint.

[7] Tennyson has given a very poor substitute for the beautifully

pathetic account given of the death of St. Simeon in _Acta_, i., 168,

and again in the ninth chapter of the second Life, _Ibid_., 273. But

this is to be explained perhaps by the moral purpose of the poem.

The Talking Oak

First published in 1842, and republished in all subsequent editions

with only two slight alterations: in line 113 a mere variant in

spelling, and in line 185, where in place of the present reading the

editions between 1842 and 1848 read, “For, ah! the Dryad-days were

brief”.

Tennyson told Mr. Aubrey de Vere that the poem was an experiment meant

to test the degree in which it is in the power of poetry to humanise

external nature. Tennyson might have remembered that Ovid had made the

same experiment nearly two thousand years ago, while Goethe had

immediately anticipated him in his charming _Der Junggesett und der

Mühlbach_. There was certainly no novelty in such an attempt. The poem

is in parts charmingly written, but the oak is certainly “garrulously

given,” and comes perilously near to tediousness.

Once more the gate behind me falls;

Once more before my face

I see the moulder’d Abbey-walls,

That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,

Beneath its drift of smoke;

And ah! with what delighted eyes

I turn to yonder oak.

For when my passion first began,

Ere that, which in me burn’d,

The love, that makes me thrice a man,

Could hope itself return’d;

To yonder oak within the field

I spoke without restraint,

And with a larger faith appeal’d

Than Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talk’d with him apart,

And told him of my choice,

Until he plagiarised a heart,

And answer’d with a voice.

Tho’ what he whisper’d, under Heaven

None else could understand;

I found him garrulously given,

A babbler in the land.

But since I heard him make reply

Is many a weary hour;

’Twere well to question him, and try

If yet he keeps the power.

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,

Broad Oak of Sumner-chace,

Whose topmost branches can discern

The roofs of Sumner-place!

Say thou, whereon I carved her name,

If ever maid or spouse,

As fair as my Olivia, came

To rest beneath thy boughs.—

“O Walter, I have shelter’d here

Whatever maiden grace

The good old Summers, year by year,

Made ripe in Sumner-chace:

“Old Summers, when the monk was fat,

And, issuing shorn and sleek,

Would twist his girdle tight, and pat

The girls upon the cheek.

“Ere yet, in scorn of Peter’s-pence,

And number’d bead, and shrift,

Bluff Harry broke into the spence,[1]

And turn’d the cowls adrift:

“And I have seen some score of those

Fresh faces, that would thrive

When his man-minded offset rose

To chase the deer at five;

“And all that from the town would stroll,

Till that wild wind made work

In which the gloomy brewer’s soul

Went by me, like a stork:

“The slight she-slips of loyal blood,

And others, passing praise,

Strait-laced, but all too full in bud

For puritanic stays:[2]>

“And I have shadow’d many a group

Of beauties, that were born

In teacup-times of hood and hoop,

Or while the patch was worn;

“And, leg and arm with love-knots gay,

About me leap’d and laugh’d

The Modish Cupid of the day,

And shrill’d his tinsel shaft.

“I swear (and else may insects prick

Each leaf into a gall)

This girl, for whom your heart is sick,

Is three times worth them all;

“For those and theirs, by Nature’s law,

Have faded long ago;

But in these latter springs I saw

Your own Olivia blow,

“From when she gamboll’d on the greens,

A baby-germ, to when

The maiden blossoms of her teens

Could number five from ten.

“I swear, by leaf, and wind, and rain

(And hear me with thine ears),

That, tho’ I circle in the grain

Five hundred rings of years—

“Yet, since I first could cast a shade,

Did never creature pass

So slightly, musically made,

So light upon the grass:

“For as to fairies, that will flit

To make the greensward fresh,

I hold them exquisitely knit,

But far too spare of flesh.”

Oh, hide thy knotted knees in fern,

And overlook the chace;

And from thy topmost branch discern

The roofs of Sumner-place.

But thou, whereon I carved her name,

That oft hast heard my vows,

Declare when last Olivia came

To sport beneath thy boughs.

“O yesterday, you know, the fair

Was holden at the town;

Her father left his good arm-chair,

And rode his hunter down.

“And with him Albert came on his.

I look’d at him with joy:

As cowslip unto oxlip is,

So seems she to the boy.

“An hour had past—and, sitting straight

Within the low-wheel’d chaise,

Her mother trundled to the gate

Behind the dappled grays.

“But, as for her, she stay’d[3] at home,

And on the roof she went,

And down the way you use to come,

She look’d with discontent.

“She left the novel half-uncut

Upon the rosewood shelf;

She left the new piano shut:

She could not please herself.

“Then ran she, gamesome as the colt,

And livelier than a lark

She sent her voice thro’ all the holt

Before her, and the park.

“A light wind chased her on the wing,

And in the chase grew wild,

As close as might be would he cling

About the darling child:

“But light as any wind that blows

So fleetly did she stir,

The flower she touch’d on dipt and rose,

And turn’d to look at her.

“And here she came, and round me play’d,

And sang to me the whole

Of those three stanzas that you made

About my ‘giant bole’;

“And in a fit of frolic mirth

She strove to span my waist:

Alas, I was so broad of girth,

I could not be embraced.

“I wish’d myself the fair young beech

That here beside me stands,

That round me, clasping each in each,

She might have lock’d her hands.

“Yet seem’d the pressure thrice as sweet

As woodbine’s fragile hold,

Or when I feel about my feet

The berried briony fold.”

O muffle round thy knees with fern,

And shadow Sumner-chace!

Long may thy topmost branch discern

The roofs of Sumner-place!

But tell me, did she read the name

I carved with many vows

When last with throbbing heart I came

To rest beneath thy boughs?

“O yes, she wander’d round and round

These knotted knees of mine,

And found, and kiss’d the name she found,

And sweetly murmur’d thine.

“A teardrop trembled from its source,

And down my surface crept.

My sense of touch is something coarse,

But I believe she wept.

“Then flush’d her cheek with rosy light,

She glanced across the plain;

But not a creature was in sight:

She kiss’d me once again.

“Her kisses were so close and kind,

That, trust me on my word,

Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,

But yet my sap was stirr’d:

“And even into my inmost ring

A pleasure I discern’d

Like those blind motions of the Spring,

That show the year is turn’d.

“Thrice-happy he that may caress

The ringlet’s waving balm

The cushions of whose touch may press

The maiden’s tender palm.

“I, rooted here among the groves,

But languidly adjust

My vapid vegetable loves[4]

With anthers and with dust:

“For, ah! my friend, the days were brief[5]

Whereof the poets talk,

When that, which breathes within the leaf,

Could slip its bark and walk.

“But could I, as in times foregone,

From spray, and branch, and stem,

Have suck’d and gather’d into one

The life that spreads in them,

“She had not found me so remiss;

But lightly issuing thro’,

I would have paid her kiss for kiss

With usury thereto.”

O flourish high, with leafy towers,

And overlook the lea,

Pursue thy loves among the bowers,

But leave thou mine to me.

O flourish, hidden deep in fern,

Old oak, I love thee well;

A thousand thanks for what I learn

And what remains to tell.

“’Tis little more: the day was warm;

At last, tired out with play,

She sank her head upon her arm,

And at my feet she lay.

“Her eyelids dropp’d their silken eaves.

I breathed upon her eyes

Thro’ all the summer of my leaves

A welcome mix’d with sighs.

“I took the swarming sound of life—

The music from the town—

The murmurs of the drum and fife

And lull’d them in my own.

“Sometimes I let a sunbeam slip,

To light her shaded eye;

A second flutter’d round her lip

Like a golden butterfly;

“A third would glimmer on her neck

To make the necklace shine;

Another slid, a sunny fleck,

From head to ancle fine.

“Then close and dark my arms I spread,

And shadow’d all her rest—

Dropt dews upon her golden head,

An acorn in her breast.

“But in a pet she started up,

And pluck’d it out, and drew

My little oakling from the cup,

And flung him in the dew.

“And yet it was a graceful gift—

I felt a pang within

As when I see the woodman lift

His axe to slay my kin.

“I shook him down because he was

The finest on the tree.

He lies beside thee on the grass.

O kiss him once for me.

“O kiss him twice and thrice for me,

That have no lips to kiss,

For never yet was oak on lea

Shall grow so fair as this.”

Step deeper yet in herb and fern,

Look further thro’ the chace,

Spread upward till thy boughs discern

The front of Sumner-place.

This fruit of thine by Love is blest,

That but a moment lay

Where fairer fruit of Love may rest

Some happy future day.

I kiss it twice, I kiss it thrice,

The warmth it thence shall win

To riper life may magnetise

The baby-oak within.

But thou, while kingdoms overset,

Or lapse from hand to hand,

Thy leaf shall never fail, nor yet

Thine acorn in the land.

May never saw dismember thee,

Nor wielded axe disjoint,

That art the fairest-spoken tree

From here to Lizard-point.

O rock upon thy towery top

All throats that gurgle sweet!

All starry culmination drop

Balm-dews to bathe thy feet!

All grass of silky feather grow—

And while he sinks or swells

The full south-breeze around thee blow

The sound of minster bells.

The fat earth feed thy branchy root,

That under deeply strikes!

The northern morning o’er thee shoot

High up, in silver spikes!

Nor ever lightning char thy grain,

But, rolling as in sleep,

Low thunders bring the mellow rain,

That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath,

That only by thy side

Will I to Olive plight my troth,

And gain her for my bride.

And when my marriage morn may fall,

She, Dryad-like, shall wear

Alternate leaf and acorn-ball

In wreath about her hair.

And I will work in prose and rhyme,

And praise thee more in both

Than bard has honour’d beech or lime,

Or that Thessalian growth,[6]

In which the swarthy ringdove sat,

And mystic sentence spoke;

And more than England honours that,

Thy famous brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abode

Till all the paths were dim,

And far below the Roundhead rode,

And humm’d a surly hymn.

[1] Spence is a larder and buttery. In the _Promptorium Parverum_ it

is defined as “cellarium promptuarium”.

[2] Cf. Burns’ “godly laces,” _To the Unco Righteous_.

[3] All editions previous to 1853 have ‘staid’.

[4] The phrase is Marvell’s. _Cf. To his Coy Mistress_ (a favourite

poem of Tennyson’s), “my vegetable loves should grow”.

[5] 1842 to 1850. “For, ah! the Dryad-days were brief.

[6] A reference to the oracular oaks of Dodona which was, of course,

in Epirus, but the Ancients believed, no doubt erroneously, that there

was another Dodona in Thessaly. See the article “Dodona” in Smith’s

_Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography_.

Love and Duty

Published first in 1842.

Whether this beautiful poem is autobiographical and has reference to

the compulsory separation of Tennyson and Miss Emily Sellwood,

afterwards his wife, in 1840, it is impossible for this editor to say,

as Lord Tennyson in his _Life_ of his father is silent on the subject.

Of love that never found his earthly close,

What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?

Or all the same as if he had not been?

Not so. Shall Error in the round of time

Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout[1]

For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself

Thro’ madness, hated by the wise, to law

System and empire? Sin itself be found

The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?

And only he, this wonder, dead, become

Mere highway dust? or year by year alone

Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,

Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!

If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,

Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,

The staring eye glazed o’er with sapless days,

The long mechanic pacings to and fro,

The set gray life, and apathetic end.

But am I not the nobler thro’ thy love?

O three times less unworthy! likewise thou

Art more thro’ Love, and greater than thy years.

The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon

Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring

The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit

Of wisdom.[2] Wait: my faith is large in Time,

And that which shapes it to some perfect end.

Will some one say, then why not ill for good?

Why took ye not your pastime? To that man

My work shall answer, since I knew the right

And did it; for a man is not as God,

But then most Godlike being most a man.—

So let me think ’tis well for thee and me—

Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine

Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow

To feel it! For how hard it seem’d to me,

When eyes, love-languid thro’ half-tears, would dwell

One earnest, earnest moment upon mine,

Then not to dare to see! when thy low voice,

Faltering, would break its syllables, to keep

My own full-tuned,—hold passion in a leash,

And not leap forth and fall about thy neck,

And on thy bosom, (deep-desired relief!)

Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh’d

Upon my brain, my senses, and my soul!

For love himself took part against himself

To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love—

O this world’s curse—beloved but hated—came

Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine,

And crying, “Who is this? behold thy bride,”

She push’d me from thee.

If the sense is hard

To alien ears, I did not speak to these—

No, not to thee, but to thyself in me:

Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all.

Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak,

To have spoken once? It could not but be well.

The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good,[3]

The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill,

And all good things from evil, brought the night

In which we sat together and alone,

And to the want, that hollow’d all the heart,

Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye,

That burn’d upon its object thro’ such tears

As flow but once a life.

The trance gave way

To those caresses, when a hundred times

In that last kiss, which never was the last,

Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.

Then follow’d counsel, comfort and the words

That make a man feel strong in speaking truth;

Till now the dark was worn, and overhead

The lights of sunset and of sunrise mix’d

In that brief night; the summer night, that paused

Among her stars to hear us; stars that hung

Love-charm’d to listen: all the wheels of Time

Spun round in station, but the end had come.

O then like those, who clench[4] their nerves to rush

Upon their dissolution, we two rose,

There-closing like an individual life—

In one blind cry of passion and of pain,

Like bitter accusation ev’n to death,

Caught up the whole of love and utter’d it,

And bade adieu for ever.

Live—yet live—

Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all

Life needs for life is possible to will—

Live happy; tend thy flowers; be tended by

My blessing! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts

Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou

For calmer hours to Memory’s darkest hold,[5]

If not to be forgotten—not at once—

Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams,

O might it come like one that looks content,

With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth,

And point thee forward to a distant light,

Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart

And leave thee frëer, till thou wake refresh’d,

Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown

Full quire, and morning driv’n her plow of pearl[6]

Far furrowing into light the mounded rack,

Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea.

[1] As this passage is a little obscure, it may not be superfluous to

point out that “shout” is a substantive.

[2] The distinction between “knowledge” and “wisdom” is a favourite

one with Tennyson. See _In Memoriam_, cxiv.; _Locksley Hall_, 141, and

for the same distinction see Cowper, _Task_, vi., 88-99.

[3] Suggested by Theocritus, _Id_., xv., 104-5.

[4] 1842 to 1845. O then like those, that clench.

[5] Pathos, in the Greek sense, “suffering”. All editions up to and

including 1850 have a small “s” and a small “m” for Shadow and Memory,

and read thus:—

Too sadly for their peace, so put it back

For calmer hours in memory’s darkest hold,

If unforgotten! should it cross thy dreams,

So might it come, etc.

[6] _Cf. Princess_, iii.:—

Morn in the white wake of the morning star

Came furrowing all the orient into gold,

and with both cf. Greene, _Orlando Furioso_, i., 2:—

Seest thou not Lycaon’s son?

The hardy plough-swain unto mighty Jove

Hath _trac’d his silver furrows in the heaven_,

which in its turn is borrowed from Ariosto, _Orl. Fur._, xx., lxxxii.:—

Apena avea Licaonia prole

Per li solchi del ciel volto

L’aratro.

The Golden Year

This poem was first published in the fourth edition of the poems 1846.

No alterations were made in it after 1851. The poem had a message for

the time at which it was written. The country was in a very troubled

state. The contest between the Protectionists and Free-traders was at

its acutest stage. The Maynooth endowment and the “godless colleges”

had brought into prominence questions of the gravest moment in religion

and education, while the Corn Bill and the Coercion Bill had inflamed

the passions of party politicians almost to madness. Tennyson, his son

tells us, entered heartily into these questions, believing that the

remedies for these distempers lay in the spread of education, a more

catholic spirit in the press, a partial adoption of Free Trade

principles, and union as far as possible among the different sections

of Christianity.

Well, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote:

It was last summer on a tour in Wales:

Old James was with me: we that day had been

Up Snowdon; and I wish’d for Leonard there,

And found him in Llanberis:[1] then we crost

Between the lakes, and clamber’d half-way up

The counterside; and that same song of his

He told me; for I banter’d him, and swore

They said he lived shut up within himself,

A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,

That, setting the _how much_ before the _how_,

Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, “Give,[2]

Cram us with all,” but count not me the herd!

To which “They call me what they will,” he said:

“But I was born too late: the fair new forms,

That float about the threshold of an age,

Like truths of Science waiting to be caught—

Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown’d—

Are taken by the forelock. Let it be.

But if you care indeed to listen, hear

These measured words, my work of yestermorn.

“We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;

The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun;

The dark Earth follows wheel’d in her ellipse;

And human things returning on themselves

Move onward, leading up the golden year.

“Ah, tho’ the times, when some new thought can bud,

Are but as poets’ seasons when they flower,

Yet seas, that daily gain upon the shore,[3]

Have ebb and flow conditioning their march,

And slow and sure comes up the golden year.

“When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,

But smit with freer light shall slowly melt

In many streams to fatten lower lands,

And light shall spread, and man be liker man

Thro’ all the season of the golden year.

“Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?

If all the world were falcons, what of that?

The wonder of the eagle were the less,

But he not less the eagle. Happy days

Roll onward, leading up the golden year.

“Fly happy happy sails and bear the Press;

Fly happy with the mission of the Cross;

Knit land to land, and blowing havenward

With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,

Enrich the markets of the golden year.

“But we grow old! Ah! when shall all men’s good

Be each man’s rule, and universal Peace

Lie like a shaft of light across the land,

And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,

Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?”

Thus far he flow’d, and ended; whereupon

“Ah, folly!” in mimic cadence answer’d James—

“Ah, folly! for it lies so far away.

Not in our time, nor in our children’s time,

’Tis like the second world to us that live;

’Twere all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven

As on this vision of the golden year.”

With that he struck his staff against the rocks

And broke it,—James,—you know him,—old, but full

Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet,

And like an oaken stock in winter woods,

O’erflourished with the hoary clematis:

Then added, all in heat: “What stuff is this!

Old writers push’d the happy season back,—

The more fools they,—we forward: dreamers both:

You most, that in an age, when every hour

Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death,

Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman, rapt

Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip[4]

His hand into the bag: but well I know

That unto him who works, and feels he works,

This same grand year is ever at the doors.”

He spoke; and, high above, I heard them blast

The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap

And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff.

[1] 1846 to 1850.

And joined him in Llanberis; and that same song

He told me, etc.

[2] Proverbs xxx. 15:

“The horseleach hath two daughters, crying,

Give, give”.

[3] 1890. Altered to “Yet oceans daily gaining on the land”.

[4] _Selections_, 1865. Plunge.

Ulysses

First published in 1842, no alterations were made in it subsequently.

This noble poem, which is said to have induced Sir Robert Peel to give

Tennyson his pension, was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death,

presumably therefore in 1833. “It gave my feeling,” Tennyson said to

his son, “about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of

life perhaps more simply than anything in _In Memoriam_.” It is not the

_Ulysses_ of Homer, nor was it suggested by the _Odyssey_. The germ,

the spirit and the sentiment of the poem are from the twenty-sixth

canto of Dante’s _Inferno_, where Ulysses in the Limbo of the Deceivers

speaks from the flame which swathes him. I give a literal version of

the passage:—

“Neither fondness for my son nor reverence for my aged sire nor the due

love which ought to have gladdened Penelope could conquer in me the

ardour which I had to become experienced in the world and in human vice

and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one ship and with

that small company which had not deserted me.... I and my companions

were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pass where Hercules

assigned his landmarks. ‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred

thousand dangers have reached the West deny not to this the brief vigil

of your senses that remain, experience of the unpeopled world beyond

the sun. Consider your origin, ye were not formed to live like Brutes

but to follow virtue and knowledge.... Night already saw the other pole

with all its stars and ours so low that it rose not from the ocean

floor’” (_Inferno_, xxvi., 94-126).

But if the germ is here the expansion is Tennyson’s; he has added

elaboration and symmetry, fine touches, magical images and magical

diction. There is nothing in Dante which answers to—

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

or

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Of these lines well does Carlyle say what so many will feel: “These

lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would till whole

Lacrymatorics as I read”.

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades[1]

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,[2]

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,[3]

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,[4]

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,[5]

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[1] Virgil, _Æn_., i., 748, and iii., 516.

[2] _Odyssey_, i., 1-4.

[3] _Cf_. Shakespeare, _Troilus and Cressida_:—

Perseverance, dear, my lord,

Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail

In monumental mockery.

[4] How admirably has Tennyson touched off the character of the

Telemachus of the _Odyssey_.

[5] The Happy Isles, the _Fortunatæ Insulæ_ of the Romans and the αἱ

τῶν Μακάρων νῆσοι of the Greeks, have been identified by geographers

as those islands in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa; some

take them to mean the Canary Islands, the Madeira group and the

Azores, while they may have included the Cape de Verde Islands as

well. What seems certain is that these places with their soft

delicious climate and lovely scenery gave the poets an idea of a happy

abode for departed spirits, and so the conception of the _Elysian

Fields_. The _loci classici_ on these abodes are Homer, Odyssey, iv.,

563 _seqq._:—

ᾁλλά σ’ ες Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πέιρατα γαιής

ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς

τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν,

οὐ νιφετὸς, οὔτ’ ἄρ χειμὼν πολὺς, οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρος

ἀλλ’ άιεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνέιοντας ἀήτας

ὠκεανὸς ἀνιήσιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους.

[But the Immortals will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the

world’s limits where is Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, where life is

easiest for man; no snow is there, no nor no great storm, nor any rain,

but always ocean sendeth forth the shrilly breezes of the West to cool

and refresh men.], and Pindar, _Olymp_., ii., 178 _seqq_., compared

with the splendid fragment at the beginning of the _Dirges_. Elysium

was afterwards placed in the netherworld, as by Virgil. Thus, as so

often the suggestion was from the facts of geography, the rest soon

became an allegorical myth, and to attempt to identify and localise

“the Happy Isles” is as great an absurdity as to attempt to identify

and localise the island of Shakespeare’s _Tempest_.

Locksley Hall

First published in 1842, and no alterations were made in it

subsequently to the edition of 1850; except that in the Selections

published in 1865 in the third stanza the reading was “half in ruin”

for “in the distance”. This poem, as Tennyson explained, was not

autobiographic but purely imaginary, “representing young life, its good

side, its deficiences and its yearnings”. The poem, he added, was

written in Trochaics because the elder Hallam told him that the English

people liked that metre. The hero is a sort of preliminary sketch of

the hero in _Maud_, the position and character of each being very

similar: both are cynical and querulous, and break out into tirades

against their kind and society; both have been disappointed in love,

and both find the same remedy for their afflictions by mixing

themselves with action and becoming “one with their kind”.

_Locksley Hall_ was suggested, as Tennyson acknowledged, by Sir William

Jones’ translation of the old Arabian Moâllakât, a collection from the

works of pre-Mahommedan poets. See Sir William Jones’ works, quarto

edition, vol. iv., pp. 247-57. But only one of these poems, namely the

poem of Amriolkais, could have immediately influenced him. In this the

poet supposes himself attended on a journey by a company of friends,

and they pass near a place where his mistress had lately lived, but

from which her tribe had then removed. He desires them to stop awhile,

that he may weep over the deserted remains of her tent. They comply

with his request, but exhort him to show more strength of mind, and

urge two topics of consolation, namely, that he had before been equally

unhappy and that he had enjoyed his full share of pleasures. Thus by

the recollection of his past delights his imagination is kindled and

his grief suspended. But Tennyson’s chief indebtedness is rather in the

oriental colouring given to his poem, chiefly in the sentiment and

imagery. Thus in the couplet—

Many a night I saw the Pleiads rising through the mellow shade

Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangl’d in a silver braid,

we are reminded of “It was the hour when the Pleiads appeared in the

firmament like the folds of a silken sash variously decked with gems”.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

’Tis the place, and all around it,[1] as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams[2] about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,

Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.—

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s[3] breast;

In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;

In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, “My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.”

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn’d—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs—

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes—

Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong”;

Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long”.

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn’d it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.[4]

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips.[5]

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,

Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand—

Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace,

Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten’d forehead of the fool!

Well—’tis well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved—

Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom, tho’ my heart be at the root.

Never, tho’ my mortal summers to such length of years should come

As the many-winter’d crow that leads the clanging rookery home.[6]

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?

Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish’d: sweetly did she speak and move:

Such a one do I remember, whom to look it was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?

No—she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn’d of devils! this is truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow[7] is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,

In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,

To thy widow’d marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the “Never, never,” whisper’d by the phantom years,

And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry,

’Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest.

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.

Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.

“They were dangerous guides the feelings—she herself was not exempt—

Truly, she herself had suffer’d”—Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care,

I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barr’d with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng’d with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman’s ground,

When the ranks are roll’d in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other’s heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.

Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,

When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,

Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,

Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;[8]

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,

Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;[9]

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;[10]

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;[10]

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunderstorm;[10]

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.[10]

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph’d, ere my passion sweeping thro’ me left me dry,

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint,

Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,[11]

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,

Tho’ the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy’s?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,

And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,

Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,

They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string?

I am shamed thro’ all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain—[12]

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine—

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr’d;—

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle’s ward.

Or to burst all links of habit—there to wander far away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.[13]

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,

Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer[14] from the

crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom’d bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—

Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,

In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp’d no longer shall have scope and

breathing-space;

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run,

Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks.

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books—

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I _know_ my words are wild,

But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

_I_, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,[15]

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime?

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,

Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua’s moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.

Let the great world spin[16] for ever down the ringing grooves[17] of

change.

Thro’ the shadow of the globe[18] we sweep into the younger day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.[19]

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the

Sun—[20]

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro’ all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,

Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

[1] 1842. And round the gables.

[2] “Gleams,” it appears, is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of the

curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an

interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid

of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson

had never, he said, heard of that meaning of “gleams,” adding he

wished he had. He meant nothing more in the passage than “to express

the flying gleams of light across a dreary moorland when looking at it

under peculiarly dreary circumstances”. See for this, _Life_, iii.,

82.

[3] 1842 and all up to and including 1850 have a capital _R_ to robin.

[4] Cf. W. R. Spencer (_Poems_, p. 166):—

What eye with clear account remarks

The ebbing of his glass,

When all its sands are diamond sparks

That dazzle as they pass.

But this is of course in no way parallel to Tennyson’s subtly beautiful

image, which he himself pronounced to be the best simile he had ever

made.

[5] Cf. Guarini, _Pastor Fido_:—

Ma i colpi di due labbre innamorate

Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca,

... ove l’ un alma e l’altra Corre.

[6] _Cf._ Horace’s _Annosa Cornix_, Odes III., xvii., 13.

[7] The reference is to Dante, _Inferno_, v. 121-3:—

Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria.

For the pedigree and history of this see the present editor’s

_Illustrations of Tennyson_, p. 63.

[8] The epithet “dreary” shows that Tennyson preferred realistic

picturesqueness to dramatic propriety.

[9] See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_.

[10]

See the introductory note to _The Golden Year_.

[11] Tennyson said that this simile was suggested by a passage in

_Pringle’s Travels;_ the incident only is described, and with

thrilling vividness, by Pringle; but its application in simile is

Tennyson’s. See _A Narrative of a Residence in South Africa_, by

Thomas Pringle, p. 39:

“The night was extremely dark and the rain fell so heavily that in

spite of the abundant supply of dry firewood, which we had luckily

provided, it was not without difficulty that we could keep one

watchfire burning.... About midnight we were suddenly roused by the

roar of a lion close to our tents. It was so loud and tremendous that

for the moment I actually thought that a thunderstorm had burst upon

us.... We roused up the half-extinguished fire to a roaring blaze ...

this unwonted display probably daunted our grim visitor, for he gave us

no further trouble that night.”

[12] With this _cf_. Leopardi, _Aspasia_, 53-60:—

Non cape in quelle

Anguste fronti ugual concetto. E male

Al vivo sfolgora di quegli sguardi

Spera l’uomo ingannato, e mal chiede

Sensi profondi, sconosciuti, è molto

Più che virili, in chi dell’ uomo al tutto

Da natura è minor. Che se più molli

E più tenui le membra, essa la mente

Men capace e men forte anco riceve.

[13] One wonders Tennyson could have had the heart to excise the

beautiful couplet which in his MS. followed this stanza.

All about a summer ocean, leagues on leagues of golden calm,

And within melodious waters rolling round the knolls of palm.

[14] 1842 and all up to and inclusive of 1850. Droops the trailer.

This is one of Tennyson’s many felicitous corrections. In the

monotonous, motionless splendour of a tropical landscape the smallest

movement catches the eye, the flight of a bird, the gentle waving of

the trailer stirred by the breeze from the sea.

[15] _Cf_. Shakespeare, “foreheads villainously low”.

[16] 1842. Peoples spin.

[17] Tennyson tells us that when he travelled by the first train from

Liverpool to Manchester in 1830 it was night and he thought that the

wheels ran in a groove, hence this line.

[18] 1842. The world.

[19] Cathay, the old name for China.

[20] _Cf_. Tasso, _Gems_, ix., st. 91:—

Nuova nube di polve ecco vicina

Che fulgori in grembo tiene.

(Lo! a fresh cloud of dust is near which

Carries in its breast thunderbolts.)

Godiva

First published in 1842. No alteration was made in any subsequent

edition.

The poem was written in 1840 when Tennyson was returning from Coventry

to London, after his visit to Warwickshire in that year. The Godiva

pageant takes place in that town at the great fair on Friday in Trinity

week. Earl Leofric was the Lord of Coventry in the reign of Edward the

Confessor, and he and his wife Godiva founded a magnificent Benedictine

monastery at Coventry. The first writer who mentions this legend is

Matthew of Westminster, who wrote in 1307, that is some 250 years after

Leofric’s time, and what authority he had for it is not known. It is

certainly not mentioned by the many preceding writers who have left

accounts of Leofric and Godiva (see Gough’s edition of Camden’s

_Britannia_, vol. ii., p. 346, and for a full account of the legend see

W. Reader, _The History and Description of Coventry Show Fair, with the

History of Leofric and Godiva_). With Tennyson’s should be compared

Moultrie’s beautiful poem on the same subject, and Landor’s Imaginary

Conversation between Leofric and Godiva.

[1] _I waited for the train at Coventry;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,

To match the three tall spires;_[2] _and there I shaped

The city’s ancient legend into this:_

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,

New men, that in the flying of a wheel

Cry down the past, not only we, that prate

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,

And loathed to see them overtax’d; but she

Did more, and underwent, and overcame,

The woman of a thousand summers back,

Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled

In Coventry: for when he laid a tax

Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

Their children, clamouring, “If we pay, we starve!”

She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode

About the hall, among his dogs, alone,

His beard a foot before him, and his hair

A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And pray’d him, “If they pay this tax, they starve”.

Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,

“You would not let your little finger ache

For such as _these_?”—“But I would die,” said she.

He laugh’d, and swore by Peter and by Paul;

Then fillip’d at the diamond in her ear;

“O ay, ay, ay, you talk!”—“Alas!” she said,

“But prove me what it is I would not do.”

And from a heart as rough as Esau’s hand,

He answer’d, “Ride you naked thro’ the town,

And I repeal it”; and nodding as in scorn,

He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,

As winds from all the compass shift and blow,

Made war upon each other for an hour,

Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,

And bad him cry, with sound of trumpet, all

The hard condition; but that she would loose

The people: therefore, as they loved her well,

From then till noon no foot should pace the street,

No eye look down, she passing; but that all

Should keep within, door shut, and window barr’d.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there

Unclasp’d the wedded eagles of her belt,

The grim Earl’s gift; but ever at a breath

She linger’d, looking like a summer moon

Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,

And shower’d the rippled ringlets to her knee;

Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair

Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid

From pillar unto pillar, until she reach’d

The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt

In purple blazon’d with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:

The deep air listen’d round her as she rode,

And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.

The little wide-mouth’d heads upon the spout

Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur

Made her cheek flame: her palfrey’s footfall shot

Light horrors thro’ her pulses: the blind walls

Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead

Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she

Not less thro’ all bore up, till, last, she saw

The white-flower’d elder-thicket from the field

Gleam thro’ the Gothic archways[3] in the wall.

Then she rode back cloth’d on with chastity:

And one low churl,[4] compact of thankless earth,

The fatal byword of all years to come,

Boring a little auger-hole in fear,

Peep’d—but his eyes, before they had their will,

Were shrivell’d into darkness in his head,

And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait

On noble deeds, cancell’d a sense misused;

And she, that knew not, pass’d: and all at once,

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon

Was clash’d and hammer’d from a hundred towers,[5]

One after one: but even then she gain’d

Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown’d,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away,

And built herself an everlasting name.

[1] These four lines are not in the privately printed volume of 1842,

but were added afterwards.

[2] St. Michael’s, Trinity, and St. John.

[3] 1844. Archway.

[4] His effigy is still to be seen, protruded from an upper window in

High Street, Coventry.

[5] A most poetical licence. Thirty-two towers are the very utmost

allowed by writers on ancient Coventry.

The Two Voices

First published in 1842, though begun as early as 1833 and in course of

composition in 1834. See Spedding’s letter dated 19th September, 1834.

Its original title was _The Thoughts of a Suicide_. No alterations were

made in the poem after 1842.

It adds interest to this poem to know that it is autobiographical. It

was written soon after the death of Arthur Hallam when Tennyson’s

depression was deepest. “When I wrote _The Two Voices_ I was so utterly

miserable, a burden to myself and to my family, that I said, ‘Is life

worth anything?’” It is the history—as Spedding put it—of the

agitations, the suggestions and counter-suggestions of a mind sunk in

hopeless despondency, and meditating self-destruction, together with

the manner of its recovery to a more healthy condition. We have two

singularly interesting parallels to it in preceding poetry. The one is

in the third book of Lucretius (830-1095), where the arguments for

suicide are urged, not merely by the poet himself, but by arguments

placed by him in the mouth of Nature herself, and urged with such

cogency that they are said to have induced one of his editors and

translators, Creech, to put an end to his life. The other is in

Spenser, in the dialogue between Despair and the Red Cross Knight,

where Despair puts the case for self-destruction, and the Red Cross

Knight rebuts the arguments (_Faerie Queene_, I. ix., st.

xxxviii.-liv.).

A still small voice spake unto me,

“Thou art so full of misery,

Were it not better not to be?”

Then to the still small voice I said;

“Let me not cast in endless shade

What is so wonderfully made”.

To which the voice did urge reply;

“To-day I saw the dragon-fly

Come from the wells where he did lie.

“An inner impulse rent the veil

Of his old husk: from head to tail

Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

“He dried his wings: like gauze they grew:

Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew

A living flash of light he flew.”

I said, “When first the world began

Young Nature thro’ five cycles ran,

And in the sixth she moulded man.

“She gave him mind, the lordliest

Proportion, and, above the rest,

Dominion in the head and breast.”

Thereto the silent voice replied;

“Self-blinded are you by your pride:

Look up thro’ night: the world is wide.

“This truth within thy mind rehearse,

That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

“Think you this mould of hopes and fears

Could find no statelier than his peers

In yonder hundred million spheres?”

It spake, moreover, in my mind:

“Tho’ thou wert scatter’d to the wind,

Yet is there plenty of the kind”.

Then did my response clearer fall:

“No compound of this earthly ball

Is like another, all in all”.

To which he answer’d scoffingly;

“Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,

Who’ll weep for thy deficiency?

“Or will one beam[1] be less intense,

When thy peculiar difference

Is cancell’d in the world of sense?”

I would have said, “Thou canst not know,”

But my full heart, that work’d below,

Rain’d thro’ my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me:

“Thou art so steep’d in misery,

Surely ’twere better not to be.

“Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,

Nor any train of reason keep:

Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep.”

I said, “The years with change advance:

If I make dark my countenance,

I shut my life from happier chance.

“Some turn this sickness yet might take,

Ev’n yet.” But he: “What drug can make

A wither’d palsy cease to shake?”

I wept, “Tho’ I should die, I know

That all about the thorn will blow

In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

“And men, thro’ novel spheres of thought

Still moving after truth long sought,

Will learn new things when I am not.”

“Yet,” said the secret voice, “some time,

Sooner or later, will gray prime

Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

“Not less swift souls that yearn for light,

Rapt after heaven’s starry flight,

Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

“Not less the bee would range her cells,

The furzy prickle fire the dells,

The foxglove cluster dappled bells.”

I said that “all the years invent;

Each month is various to present

The world with some development.

“Were this not well, to bide mine hour,

Tho’ watching from a ruin’d tower

How grows the day of human power?”

“The highest-mounted mind,” he said,

“Still sees the sacred morning spread

The silent summit overhead.

“Will thirty seasons render plain

Those lonely lights that still remain,

Just breaking over land and main?

“Or make that morn, from his cold crown

And crystal silence creeping down,

Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

“Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let

Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set

In midst of knowledge, dream’d not yet.

“Thou hast not gain’d a real height,

Nor art thou nearer to the light,

Because the scale is infinite.

“’Twere better not to breathe or speak,

Than cry for strength, remaining weak,

And seem to find, but still to seek.

“Moreover, but to seem to find

Asks what thou lackest, thought resign’d,

A healthy frame, a quiet mind.”

I said, “When I am gone away,

‘He dared not tarry,’ men will say,

Doing dishonour to my clay.”

“This is more vile,” he made reply,

“To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh,

Than once from dread of pain to die.

“Sick art thou—a divided will

Still heaping on the fear of ill

The fear of men, a coward still.

“Do men love thee? Art thou so bound

To men, that how thy name may sound

Will vex thee lying underground?

“The memory of the wither’d leaf

In endless time is scarce more brief

Than of the garner’d Autumn-sheaf.

“Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust;

The right ear, that is fill’d with dust,

Hears little of the false or just.”

“Hard task, to pluck resolve,” I cried,

“From emptiness and the waste wide

Of that abyss, or scornful pride!

“Nay—rather yet that I could raise

One hope that warm’d me in the days

While still I yearn’d for human praise.

“When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue,

Among the tents I paused and sung,

The distant battle flash’d and rung.

“I sung the joyful Paean clear,

And, sitting, burnish’d without fear

The brand, the buckler, and the spear—

“Waiting to strive a happy strife,

To war with falsehood to the knife,

And not to lose the good of life—

“Some hidden principle to move,

To put together, part and prove,

And mete the bounds of hate and love—

“As far as might be, to carve out

Free space for every human doubt,

That the whole mind might orb about—

“To search thro’ all I felt or saw,

The springs of life, the depths of awe,

And reach the law within the law:

“At least, not rotting like a weed,

But, having sown some generous seed,

Fruitful of further thought and deed,

“To pass, when Life her light withdraws,

Not void of righteous self-applause,

Nor in a merely selfish cause—

“In some good cause, not in mine own,

To perish, wept for, honour’d, known,

And like a warrior overthrown;

“Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears,

When, soil’d with noble dust, he hears

His country’s war-song thrill his ears:

“Then dying of a mortal stroke,

What time the foeman’s line is broke.

And all the war is roll’d in smoke.”[2]

“Yea!” said the voice, “thy dream was good,

While thou abodest in the bud.

It was the stirring of the blood.

“If Nature put not forth her power[2]

About the opening of the flower,

Who is it that could live an hour?

“Then comes the check, the change, the fall.

Pain rises up, old pleasures pall.

There is one remedy for all.

“Yet hadst thou, thro’ enduring pain,

Link’d month to month with such a chain

Of knitted purport, all were vain.

“Thou hadst not between death and birth

Dissolved the riddle of the earth.

So were thy labour little worth.

“That men with knowledge merely play’d,

I told thee—hardly nigher made,

Tho’ scaling slow from grade to grade;

“Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind,

Named man, may hope some truth to find,

That bears relation to the mind.

“For every worm beneath the moon

Draws different threads, and late and soon

Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

“Cry, faint not: either Truth is born

Beyond the polar gleam forlorn,

Or in the gateways of the morn.

“Cry, faint not, climb: the summits slope

Beyond the furthest nights of hope,

Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope.

“Sometimes a little corner shines,

As over rainy mist inclines

A gleaming crag with belts of pines.

“I will go forward, sayest thou,

I shall not fail to find her now.

Look up, the fold is on her brow.

“If straight thy track, or if oblique,

Thou know’st not. Shadows thou dost strike,

Embracing cloud, Ixion-like;

“And owning but a little more

Than beasts, abidest lame and poor,

Calling thyself a little lower

“Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl!

Why inch by inch to darkness crawl?

There is one remedy for all.”

“O dull, one-sided voice,” said I,

“Wilt thou make everything a lie,

To flatter me that I may die?

“I know that age to age succeeds,

Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,

A dust of systems and of creeds.

“I cannot hide that some have striven,

Achieving calm, to whom was given

The joy that mixes man with Heaven:

“Who, rowing hard against the stream,

Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,

And did not dream it was a dream”;

“But heard, by secret transport led,[3]

Ev’n in the charnels of the dead,

The murmur of the fountain-head—

“Which did accomplish their desire,—

Bore and forbore, and did not tire,

Like Stephen, an unquenched fire.

“He heeded not reviling tones,

Nor sold his heart to idle moans,

Tho’ cursed and scorn’d, and bruised with stones:

“But looking upward, full of grace,

He pray’d, and from a happy place

God’s glory smote him on the face.”

The sullen answer slid betwixt:

“Not that the grounds of hope were fix’d,

The elements were kindlier mix’d.”[4]

I said, “I toil beneath the curse,

But, knowing not the universe,

I fear to slide from bad to worse.[5]>

“And that, in seeking to undo

One riddle, and to find the true,

I knit a hundred others new:

“Or that this anguish fleeting hence,

Unmanacled from bonds of sense,

Be fix’d and froz’n to permanence:

“For I go, weak from suffering here;

Naked I go, and void of cheer:

What is it that I may not fear?”

“Consider well,” the voice replied,

“His face, that two hours since hath died;

Wilt thou find passion, pain or pride?

“Will he obey when one commands?

Or answer should one press his hands?

He answers not, nor understands.

“His palms are folded on his breast:

There is no other thing express’d

But long disquiet merged in rest.

“His lips are very mild and meek:

Tho’ one should smite him on the cheek,

And on the mouth, he will not speak.

“His little daughter, whose sweet face

He kiss’d, taking his last embrace,

Becomes dishonour to her race—

“His sons grow up that bear his name,

Some grow to honour, some to shame,—

But he is chill to praise or blame.[6]

“He will not hear the north wind rave,

Nor, moaning, household shelter crave

From winter rains that beat his grave.

“High up the vapours fold and swim:

About him broods the twilight dim:

The place he knew forgetteth him.”

“If all be dark, vague voice,” I said,

“These things are wrapt in doubt and dread,

Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.

“The sap dries up: the plant declines.[7]

A deeper tale my heart divines.

Know I not Death? the outward signs?

“I found him when my years were few;

A shadow on the graves I knew,

And darkness in the village yew.

“From grave to grave the shadow crept:

In her still place the morning wept:

Touch’d by his feet the daisy slept.

“The simple senses crown’d his head:[8]

‘Omega! thou art Lord,’ they said;

‘We find no motion in the dead.’

“Why, if man rot in dreamless ease,

Should that plain fact, as taught by these,

Not make him sure that he shall cease?

“Who forged that other influence,

That heat of inward evidence,

By which he doubts against the sense?

“He owns the fatal gift of eyes,[9]

That read his spirit blindly wise,

Not simple as a thing that dies.

“Here sits he shaping wings to fly:

His heart forebodes a mystery:

He names the name Eternity.

“That type of Perfect in his mind

In Nature can he nowhere find.

He sows himself in every wind.

“He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,

And thro’ thick veils to apprehend

A labour working to an end.

“The end and the beginning vex

His reason: many things perplex,

With motions, checks, and counterchecks.

“He knows a baseness in his blood

At such strange war with something good,

He may not do the thing he would.

“Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn.

Vast images in glimmering dawn,

Half shown, are broken and withdrawn.

“Ah! sure within him and without,

Could his dark wisdom find it out,

There must be answer to his doubt.

“But thou canst answer not again.

With thine own weapon art thou slain,

Or thou wilt answer but in vain.

“The doubt would rest, I dare not solve.

In the same circle we revolve.

Assurance only breeds resolve.”

As when a billow, blown against,

Falls back, the voice with which I fenced

A little ceased, but recommenced.

“Where wert thou when thy father play’d

In his free field, and pastime made,

A merry boy in sun and shade?

“A merry boy they called him then.

He sat upon the knees of men

In days that never come again,

“Before the little ducts began

To feed thy bones with lime, and ran

Their course, till thou wert also man:

“Who took a wife, who rear’d his race,

Whose wrinkles gather’d on his face,

Whose troubles number with his days:

“A life of nothings, nothing-worth,

From that first nothing ere his birth

To that last nothing under earth!”

“These words,” I said, “are like the rest,

No certain clearness, but at best

A vague suspicion of the breast:

“But if I grant, thou might’st defend

The thesis which thy words intend—

That to begin implies to end;

“Yet how should I for certain hold,[10]

Because my memory is so cold,

That I first was in human mould?

“I cannot make this matter plain,

But I would shoot, howe’er in vain,

A random arrow from the brain.

“It may be that no life is found,

Which only to one engine bound

Falls off, but cycles always round.

“As old mythologies relate,

Some draught of Lethe might await

The slipping thro’ from state to state.

“As here we find in trances, men

Forget the dream that happens then,

Until they fall in trance again.

“So might we, if our state were such

As one before, remember much,

For those two likes might meet and touch.[11]

“But, if I lapsed from nobler place,

Some legend of a fallen race

Alone might hint of my disgrace;

“Some vague emotion of delight

In gazing up an Alpine height,

Some yearning toward the lamps of night.

“Or if thro’ lower lives I came—

Tho’ all experience past became

Consolidate in mind and frame—

“I might forget my weaker lot;

For is not our first year forgot?

The haunts of memory echo not.

“And men, whose reason long was blind,

From cells of madness unconfined,[12]

Oft lose whole years of darker mind.

“Much more, if first I floated free,

As naked essence, must I be

Incompetent of memory:

“For memory dealing but with time,

And he with matter, could she climb

Beyond her own material prime?

“Moreover, something is or seems,

That touches me with mystic gleams,

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—

“Of something felt, like something here;

Of something done, I know not where;

Such as no language may declare.”

The still voice laugh’d. “I talk,” said he,

“Not with thy dreams. Suffice it thee

Thy pain is a reality.”

“But thou,” said I, “hast miss’d thy mark,

Who sought’st to wreck my mortal ark,

By making all the horizon dark.

“Why not set forth, if I should do

This rashness, that which might ensue

With this old soul in organs new?

“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,

No life that breathes with human breath

Has ever truly long’d for death.

“’Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant,

Oh life, not death, for which we pant;

More life, and fuller, that I want.”

I ceased, and sat as one forlorn.

Then said the voice, in quiet scorn,

“Behold it is the Sabbath morn”.

And I arose, and I released

The casement, and the light increased

With freshness in the dawning east.

Like soften’d airs that blowing steal,

When meres begin to uncongeal,

The sweet church bells began to peal.

On to God’s house the people prest:

Passing the place where each must rest,

Each enter’d like a welcome guest.

One walk’d between his wife and child,

With measur’d footfall firm and mild,

And now and then he gravely smiled.

The prudent partner of his blood

Lean’d on him, faithful, gentle, good,[13]

Wearing the rose of womanhood.

And in their double love secure,

The little maiden walk’d demure,

Pacing with downward eyelids pure.

These three made unity so sweet,

My frozen heart began to beat,

Remembering its ancient heat.

I blest them, and they wander’d on:

I spoke, but answer came there none:

The dull and bitter voice was gone.

A second voice was at mine ear,

A little whisper silver-clear,

A murmur, “Be of better cheer”.

As from some blissful neighbourhood,

A notice faintly understood,

“I see the end, and know the good”.

A little hint to solace woe,

A hint, a whisper breathing low,

“I may not speak of what I know”.

Like an Aeolian harp that wakes

No certain air, but overtakes

Far thought with music that it makes:

Such seem’d the whisper at my side:

“What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?” I cried.

“A hidden hope,” the voice replied:

So heavenly-toned, that in that hour

From out my sullen heart a power

Broke, like the rainbow from the shower,

To feel, altho’ no tongue can prove

That every cloud, that spreads above

And veileth love, itself is love.

And forth into the fields I went,

And Nature’s living motion lent

The pulse of hope to discontent.

I wonder’d at the bounteous hours,

The slow result of winter showers:

You scarce could see the grass for flowers.

I wonder’d, while I paced along:

The woods were fill’d so full with song,

There seem’d no room for sense of wrong.

So variously seem’d all things wrought,[14]

I marvell’d how the mind was brought

To anchor by one gloomy thought;

And wherefore rather I made choice

To commune with that barren voice,

Than him that said, “Rejoice! rejoice!”

[1] The insensibility of Nature to man’s death has been the eloquent

theme of many poets. _Cf_. Byron, _Lara_, canto ii. _ad init_., and

Matthew Arnold, _The Youth of Nature_.

[2]

_Cf. Palace of Art_, “the riddle of the painful earth”.

[3] _Seq_. The reference is to Acts of the Apostles vii. 54-60.

[4] Suggested by Shakespeare, _Julius Cæsar_, Act v., Sc. 5:—

and _the elements

So mix’d in_ him that Nature, etc.

[5] An excellent commentary on this is Clough’s

_Perché pensa, pensando vecchia_.

[6] _Cf_. Job xiv. 21:

“His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought

low, but he perceiveth it not of them.”

[7] So Bishop Butler, _Analogy_, ch. i.:

“We cannot argue _from the reason of the thing_ that death is the

destruction of living agents because we know not at all what death is

in itself, but only some of its effects”.

[8] So Milton, enfolding this idea of death, _Paradise Lost_, ii.,

672-3:—

What seemed his head

The _likeness_ of a kingly crown had on.

[9] _Cf_. Plato, _Phaedo_, x.:—ἆρα ἔχει ἀληθειάν τινα ὄψις τε καὶ ἀκοὴ

τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἤ τά γε τοιᾶυτα καὶ οἱ ποἱηταὶ ἡμὶν ἄει θρυλοῦσιν ὅτι

οὐτ ακούομεν ἀκριβὲς οὐδὲν οὔτε ὁρῶμεν.

“Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as poets are

always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?”

“Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as poets are

always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?”

The proper commentary on the whole of this passage is Plato _passim_,

but the _Phaedo_ particularly, _cf. Republic_, vii., viii. and xiv.-xv.

[10] An allusion to the myth that when souls are sent to occupy a body

again they drink of Lethe that they may forget their previous

existence. See the famous passage towards the end of the tenth book of

Plato’s _Republic_:

“All persons are compelled to drink a certain quantity of the water,

but those who are not preserved by prudence drink more than the

quantity, and each as he drinks forgets everything”.

So Milton, _Paradise Lost_, ii., 582-4.

[11] The best commentary on this will be found in Herbert Spencer’s

_Psychology_.

[12] Compare with this Tennyson’s first sonnet (_Works_, Globe

Edition, 25), and the lines in the _Ancient Sage_ in the _Passion of

the Past_ (_Id_., 551). _Cf_. too the lines in Wordsworth’s ode on

_Intimations of Immortality_:—

But there’s a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone;

The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat.

For other remarkable illustrations of this see the present writer’s

_Illustrations of Tennyson_, p. 38.

[13] _Cf_. Coleridge, _Ancient Mariner,_ iv.:—

“O happy living things ... I blessed them

The self-same moment I could pray.”

There is a close parallel between the former and the latter state

described here and in Coleridge’s mystic allegory; in both cases the

sufferers “wake to love,” the curse falling off them when they can

“bless”.

[14] 1884. And all so variously wrought (with semi-colon instead of

full stop at the end of the preceding line).

The Day-Dream

First published in 1842, but written in 1835. In it is incorporated,

though with several alterations, _The Sleeping Beauty_, published among

the poems of 1830, but excised in subsequent editions. Half

extravaganza and half apologue, like the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_,

this delightful poem may be safely left to deliver its own message and

convey its own meaning. It is an excellent illustration of the truth of

Tennyson’s own remark: “Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing

colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation according to his

ability, and according to his sympathy with the poet.”

Prologue

(No alteration has been made in the Prologue since 1842).

O, Lady Flora, let me speak:

A pleasant hour has past away

While, dreaming on your damask cheek,

The dewy sister-eyelids lay.

As by the lattice you reclined,

I went thro’ many wayward moods

To see you dreaming—and, behind,

A summer crisp with shining woods.

And I too dream’d, until at last

Across my fancy, brooding warm,

The reflex of a legend past,

And loosely settled into form.

And would you have the thought I had,

And see the vision that I saw,

Then take the broidery-frame, and add

A crimson to the quaint Macaw,

And I will tell it. Turn your face,

Nor look with that too-earnest eye—

The rhymes are dazzled from their place,

And order’d words asunder fly.

The Sleeping Palace

(No alteration since 1851.)

1

The varying year with blade and sheaf

Clothes and reclothes the happy plains;

Here rests the sap within the leaf,

Here stays the blood along the veins.

Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl’d,

Faint murmurs from the meadows come,

Like hints and echoes of the world

To spirits folded in the womb.

2

Soft lustre bathes the range of urns

On every slanting terrace-lawn.

The fountain to his place returns

Deep in the garden lake withdrawn.

Here droops the banner on the tower,

On the hall-hearths the festal fires,

The peacock in his laurel bower,

The parrot in his gilded wires.

3

Roof-haunting martins warm their eggs:

In these, in those the life is stay’d.

The mantles from the golden pegs

Droop sleepily: no sound is made,

Not even of a gnat that sings.

More like a picture seemeth all

Than those old portraits of old kings,

That watch the sleepers from the wall.

4

Here sits the Butler with a flask

Between his knees, half-drain’d; and there

The wrinkled steward at his task,

The maid-of-honour blooming fair:

The page has caught her hand in his:

Her lips are sever’d as to speak:

His own are pouted to a kiss:

The blush is fix’d upon her cheek.

5

Till all the hundred summers pass,

The beams, that thro’ the Oriel shine,

Make prisms in every carven glass,

And beaker brimm’d with noble wine.

Each baron at the banquet sleeps,

Grave faces gather’d in a ring.

His state the king reposing keeps.

He must have been a jovial king.[1]

6

All round a hedge upshoots, and shows

At distance like a little wood;

Thorns, ivies, woodbine, misletoes,

And grapes with bunches red as blood;

All creeping plants, a wall of green

Close-matted, bur and brake and briar,

And glimpsing over these, just seen,

High up, the topmost palace-spire.

7

When will the hundred summers die,

And thought and time be born again,

And newer knowledge, drawing nigh,

Bring truth that sways the soul of men?

Here all things in there place remain,

As all were order’d, ages since.

Come, Care and Pleasure, Hope and Pain,

And bring the fated fairy Prince.

[1] All editions up to and including 1851:—He must have been a jolly

king.

The Sleeping Beauty

(First printed in 1830, but does not reappear again till 1842. No

alteration since 1842.)

1

Year after year unto her feet,

She lying on her couch alone,

Across the purpled coverlet,

The maiden’s jet-black hair has grown,[1]

On either side her tranced form

Forth streaming from a braid of pearl:

The slumbrous light is rich and warm,

And moves not on the rounded curl.

2

The silk star-broider’d[2]coverlid

Unto her limbs itself doth mould

Languidly ever; and, amid

Her full black ringlets downward roll’d,

Glows forth each softly-shadow’d arm,

With bracelets of the diamond bright:

Her constant beauty doth inform

Stillness with love, and day with light.

3

She sleeps: her breathings are not heard

In palace chambers far apart.[3]

The fragrant tresses are not stirr’d

That lie upon her charmed heart.

She sleeps: on either hand[4] upswells

The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:

She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells

A perfect form in perfect rest.

[1] 1830.

The while she slumbereth alone,

_Over_ the purple coverlet,

The maiden’s jet-black hair hath grown.

[2] 1830. Star-braided.

[3] A writer in _Notes and Queries_, February, 1880, asks whether

these lines mean that the lovely princess did _not_ snore so loud that

she could be heard from one end of the palace to the other and whether

it would not have detracted from her charms had that state of things

been habitual. This brings into the field Dr. Gatty and other admirers

of Tennyson, who, it must be owned, are not very successful in giving

a satisfactory reply.

[4] 1830. Side.

The Arrival

(No alteration after 1853.)

1

All precious things, discover’d late,

To those that seek them issue forth;

For love in sequel works with fate,

And draws the veil from hidden worth.

He travels far from other skies

His mantle glitters on the rocks—

A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes,

And lighter footed than the fox.

2

The bodies and the bones of those

That strove in other days to pass,

Are wither’d in the thorny close,

Or scatter’d blanching on[1]the grass.

He gazes on the silent dead:

“They perish’d in their daring deeds.”

This proverb flashes thro’ his head,

“The many fail: the one succeeds”.

3

He comes, scarce knowing what he seeks:

He breaks the hedge: he enters there:

The colour flies into his cheeks:

He trusts to light on something fair;

For all his life the charm did talk

About his path, and hover near

With words of promise in his walk,

And whisper’d voices at his ear.[2]

4

More close and close his footsteps wind;

The Magic Music[3] in his heart

Beats quick and quicker, till he find

The quiet chamber far apart.

His spirit flutters like a lark,

He stoops—to kiss her—on his knee.

“Love, if thy tresses be so dark,

How dark those hidden eyes must be!

[1] 1842 to 1851. In.

[2] All editions up to and including 1850. In his ear.

[3] All editions up to and including 1851. Not capitals in magic

music.

The Revival

(No alteration after 1853.)

1

A touch, a kiss! the charm was snapt.

There rose a noise of striking clocks,

And feet that ran, and doors that clapt,

And barking dogs, and crowing cocks;

A fuller light illumined all,

A breeze thro’ all the garden swept,

A sudden hubbub shook the hall,

And sixty feet the fountain leapt.

2

The hedge broke in, the banner blew,

The butler drank, the steward scrawl’d,

The fire shot up, the martin flew,

The parrot scream’d, the peacock squall’d,

The maid and page renew’d their strife,

The palace bang’d, and buzz’d and clackt,

And all the long-pent stream of life

Dash’d downward in a cataract.

3

And last with these[1] the king awoke,

And in his chair himself uprear’d,

And yawn’d, and rubb’d his face, and spoke,

“By holy rood, a royal beard!

How say you? we have slept, my lords,

My beard has grown into my lap.”

The barons swore, with many words,

’Twas but an after-dinner’s nap.

4

“Pardy,” return’d the king, “but still

My joints are something[2] stiff or so.

My lord, and shall we pass the bill

I mention’d half an hour ago?”

The chancellor, sedate and vain,

In courteous words return’d reply:

But dallied with his golden chain,

And, smiling, put the question by.

[1] 1842 to 1851. And last of all.

[2] 1863. Somewhat.

The Departure

(No alteration since 1842.)

1

And on her lover’s arm she leant,

And round her waist she felt it fold,

And far across the hills they went

In that new world which is the old:

Across the hills and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,

And deep into the dying day

The happy princess follow’d him.

2

“I’d sleep another hundred years,

O love, for such another kiss;”

“O wake for ever, love,” she hears,

“O love, ’twas such as this and this.”

And o’er them many a sliding star,

And many a merry wind was borne,

And, stream’d thro’ many a golden bar,

The twilight melted into morn.

3

“O eyes long laid in happy sleep!”

“O happy sleep, that lightly fled!”

“O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!”

“O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!”

And o’er them many a flowing range

Of vapour buoy’d the crescent-bark,

And, rapt thro’ many a rosy change,

The twilight died into the dark.

4

“A hundred summers! can it be?

And whither goest thou, tell me where?”

“O seek my father’s court with me!

For there are greater wonders there.”

And o’er the hills, and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,

Beyond the night across the day,

Thro’ all the world she follow’d him.

Moral

(No alteration since 1842.)

1

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And if you find no moral there,

Go, look in any glass and say,

What moral is in being fair.

Oh, to what uses shall we put

The wildweed-flower that simply blows?

And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose?

2

But any man that walks the mead,

In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,

According as his humours lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.

And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend;[1]

So ’twere to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

[1] So Wordsworth:—

O Reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Reader! you would find

A tale in everything.

—_Simon Lee_.

L’Envoi

(No alteration since 1843 except in numbering the stanzas.)

1

You shake your head. A random string

Your finer female sense offends.

Well—were it not a pleasant thing

To fall asleep with all one’s friends;

To pass with all our social ties

To silence from the paths of men;

And every hundred years to rise

And learn the world, and sleep again;

To sleep thro’ terms of mighty wars,

And wake on science grown to more,

On secrets of the brain, the stars,

As wild as aught of fairy lore;

And all that else the years will show,

The Poet-forms of stronger hours,

The vast Republics that may grow,

The Federations and the Powers;

Titanic forces taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes;

For we are Ancients of the earth,

And in the morning of the times.

2

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep

Thro’ sunny decads new and strange,

Or gay quinquenniads would we reap

The flower and quintessence of change.

3

Ah, yet would I—and would I might!

So much your eyes my fancy take—

Be still the first to leap to light

That I might kiss those eyes awake!

For, am I right or am I wrong,

To choose your own you did not care;

You’d have _my_ moral from the song,

And I will take my pleasure there:

And, am I right or am I wrong,

My fancy, ranging thro’ and thro’,

To search a meaning for the song,

Perforce will still revert to you;

Nor finds a closer truth than this

All-graceful head, so richly curl’d,

And evermore a costly kiss

The prelude to some brighter world.

4

For since the time when Adam first

Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bud to flower,

What eyes, like thine, have waken’d hopes?

What lips, like thine, so sweetly join’d?

Where on the double rosebud droops

The fullness of the pensive mind;

Which all too dearly self-involved,[1]

Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;

A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee[2] neither hear nor see:

But break it. In the name of wife,

And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasp’d the moral of thy life,

And that for which I care to live.

[1] 1842. The pensive mind that, self-involved.

[2] 1842. Which lets thee.

Epilogue

(No alteration since 1842.)

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And, if you find a meaning there,

O whisper to your glass, and say,

“What wonder, if he thinks me fair?”

What wonder I was all unwise,

To shape the song for your delight

Like long-tail’d birds of Paradise,

That float thro’ Heaven, and cannot light?

Or old-world trains, upheld at court

By Cupid-boys of blooming hue—

But take it—earnest wed with sport,

And either sacred unto you.

Amphion

First published in 1842. No alteration since 1850.

In this humorous allegory the poet bewails his unhappy lot on having

fallen on an age so unpropitious to poetry, contrasting it with the

happy times so responsive to his predecessors who piped to a world

prepared to dance to their music. However, he must toil and be

satisfied if he can make a little garden blossom.

My father left a park to me,

But it is wild and barren,

A garden too with scarce a tree

And waster than a warren:

Yet say the neighbours when they call,

It is not bad but good land,

And in it is the germ of all

That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great

In days of old Amphion,[1]

And ta’en my fiddle to the gate,

Nor cared for seed or scion!

And had I lived when song was great,

And legs of trees were limber,

And ta’en my fiddle to the gate,

And fiddled in the timber!

’Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,

Such happy intonation,

Wherever he sat down and sung

He left a small plantation;

Wherever in a lonely grove

He set up his forlorn pipes,

The gouty oak began to move,

And flounder into hornpipes.

The mountain stirr’d its bushy crown,

And, as tradition teaches,

Young ashes pirouetted down

Coquetting with young beeches;

And briony-vine and ivy-wreath

Ran forward to his rhyming,

And from the valleys underneath

Came little copses climbing.

The linden broke her ranks and rent

The woodbine wreathes that bind her,

And down the middle, buzz! she went,

With all her bees behind her.[2]

The poplars, in long order due,

With cypress promenaded,

The shock-head willows two and two

By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shot alder from the wave,

Came yews, a dismal coterie;

Each pluck’d his one foot from the grave,

Poussetting with a sloe-tree:

Old elms came breaking from the vine,

The vine stream’d out to follow,

And, sweating rosin, plump’d the pine

From many a cloudy hollow.

And wasn’t it a sight to see

When, ere his song was ended,

Like some great landslip, tree by tree,

The country-side descended;

And shepherds from the mountain-caves

Look’d down, half-pleased, half-frighten’d,

As dash’d about the drunken leaves

The random sunshine lighten’d!

Oh, nature first was fresh to men,

And wanton without measure;

So youthful and so flexile then,

You moved her at your pleasure.

Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs!

And make her dance attendance;

Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,

And scirrhous roots and tendons.

’Tis vain! in such a brassy age

I could not move a thistle;

The very sparrows in the hedge

Scarce answer to my whistle;

Or at the most, when three-parts-sick

With strumming and with scraping,

A jackass heehaws from the rick,

The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound

Like sleepy counsel pleading:

O Lord!—’tis in my neighbour’s ground,

The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises.

And works on Gardening thro’ there,

And Methods of transplanting trees

To look as if they grew there.

The wither’d Misses! how they prose

O’er books of travell’d seamen,

And show you slips of all that grows

From England to Van Diemen.

They read in arbours clipt and cut,

And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut

And warm’d in crystal cases.

But these, tho’ fed with careful dirt,

Are neither green nor sappy;

Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,

The spindlings look unhappy,[3]

Better to me the meanest weed

That blows upon its mountain,

The vilest herb that runs to seed

Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro’ months of toil,

And years of cultivation,

Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.

I’ll take the showers as they fall,

I will not vex my bosom:

Enough if at the end of all

A little garden blossom.

[1] Amphion was no doubt capable of performing all the feats here

attributed to him, but there is no record of them; he appears to have

confined himself to charming the stones into their places when Thebes

was being built. Tennyson seems to have confounded him with Orpheus.

[2] Till 1857 these four lines ran thus:—

The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair,

The bramble cast her berry.

The gin within the juniper

Began to make him merry.

[3] All editions up to and including 1850. The poor things look

unhappy.

St. Agnes

This exquisite little poem was first published in 1837 in the

_Keepsake_, an annual edited by Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, and was

included in the edition of 1842. No alteration has been made in it

since 1842.

In 1857 the title was altered from “St. Agnes” to “St. Agnes’ Eve,”

thus bringing it near to Keats’ poem, which certainly influenced

Tennyson in writing it, as a comparison of the opening of the two poems

will show. The saint from whom the poem takes its name was a young girl

of thirteen who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian: she is a

companion to Sir Galahad.

Deep on the convent-roof the snows

Are sparkling to the moon:

My breath to heaven like vapour goes:

May my soul follow soon!

The shadows of the convent-towers

Slant down the snowy sward,

Still creeping with the creeping hours

That lead me to my Lord:

Make Thou[1] my spirit pure and clear

As are the frosty skies,

Or this first snowdrop of the year

That in[2] my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soiled and dark,

To yonder shining ground;

As this pale taper’s earthly spark,

To yonder argent round;

So shows my soul before the Lamb,

My spirit before Thee;

So in mine earthly house I am,

To that I hope to be.

Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,

Thro’ all yon starlight keen,

Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,

In raiment white and clean.

He lifts me to the golden doors;

The flashes come and go;

All heaven bursts her starry floors,

And strows[3] her lights below,

And deepens on and up! the gates

Roll back, and far within

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,[4]

To make me pure of sin.[5]

The sabbaths of Eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide—

A light upon the shining sea—

The Bridegroom[6] with his bride!

[1] In _Keepsake_: not capital in Thou.

[2] In _Keepsake_: On.

[3] In _Keepsake_: Strews.

[4] In _Keepsake_: not capitals in Heavenly and Bridegroom.

[5] In _Keepsake_: To wash me pure from sin.

[6] In _Keepsake_: capital in Bridegroom.

Sir Galahad

Published in 1842. No alteration has been made in it since. This poem

may be regarded as a prelude to _The Holy Grail_. The character of

Galahad is deduced principally from the seventeenth book of the _Morte

d’Arthur_. In the twenty-second chapter of that book St. Joseph of

Arimathea says to him: “Thou hast resembled me in two things in that

thou hast seen the marvels of the sangreal, and in that thou has been a

clean maiden”.

My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,

My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,

The hard brands shiver on the steel,

The splinter’d spear-shafts crack and fly,

The horse and rider reel:

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,

And when the tide of combat stands,

Perfume and flowers fall in showers,

That lightly rain from ladies’ hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend

On whom their favours fall!

For them I battle till the end,

To save from shame and thrall:

But all my heart is drawn above,

My knees are bow’d in crypt and shrine:

I never felt the kiss of love,

Nor maiden’s hand in mine.

More bounteous aspects on me beam,

Me mightier transports move and thrill;

So keep I fair thro’ faith and prayer

A virgin heart in work and will.

When down the stormy crescent goes,

A light before me swims,

Between dark stems the forest glows,

I hear a noise of hymns:

Then by some secret shrine I ride;

I hear a voice, but none are there;

The stalls are void, the doors are wide,

The tapers burning fair.

Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,

The silver vessels sparkle clean,

The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,

And solemn chaunts resound between.

Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres

I find a magic bark;

I leap on board: no helmsman steers:

I float till all is dark.

A gentle sound, an awful light!

Three angels bear the holy Grail:

With folded feet, in stoles of white,

On sleeping wings they sail.

Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!

My spirit beats her mortal bars,

As down dark tides the glory slides,

And star-like mingles with the stars.

When on my goodly charger borne

Thro’ dreaming towns I go,

The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,

The streets are dumb with snow.

The tempest crackles on the leads,

And, ringing, spins from brand and mail;

But o’er the dark a glory spreads,

And gilds the driving hail.

I leave the plain, I climb the height;

No branchy thicket shelter yields;

But blessed forms in whistling storms

Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden knight—to me is given

Such hope, I know not fear;

I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven

That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,

Pure spaces clothed in living beams,

Pure lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odours haunt my dreams;

And, stricken by an angel’s hand,

This mortal armour that I wear,

This weight and size, this heart and eyes,

Are touch’d, are turn’d to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,

And thro’ the mountain-walls

A rolling organ-harmony

Swells up, and shakes and falls.

Then move the trees, the copses nod,

Wings flutter, voices hover clear:

“O just and faithful knight of God!

Ride on! the prize is near”.

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;

By bridge and ford, by park and pale,

All-arm’d I ride, whate’er betide,

Until I find the holy Grail.

Edward Gray

First published in 1842 but written in or before 1840. See _Life_, i.,

209. Not altered since.

Sweet Emma Moreland of yonder town

Met me walking on yonder way,

“And have you lost your heart?” she said;

“And are you married yet, Edward Gray?”

Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me:

Bitterly weeping I turn’d away:

“Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more

Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.

“Ellen Adair she loved me well,

Against her father’s and mother’s will:

To-day I sat for an hour and wept,

By Ellen’s grave, on the windy hill.

“Shy she was, and I thought her cold;

Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;

Fill’d I was with folly and spite,

When Ellen Adair was dying for me.

“Cruel, cruel the words I said!

Cruelly came they back to-day:

‘You’re too slight and fickle,’ I said,

‘To trouble the heart of Edward Gray’.

“There I put my face in the grass—

Whisper’d, ‘Listen to my despair:

I repent me of all I did:

Speak a little, Ellen Adair!’

“Then I took a pencil, and wrote

On the mossy stone, as I lay,

‘Here lies the body of Ellen Adair;

And here the heart of Edward Gray!’

“Love may come, and love may go,

And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree:

But I will love no more, no more,

Till Ellen Adair come back to me.

“Bitterly wept I over the stone:

Bitterly weeping I turn’d away;

There lies the body of Ellen Adair!

And there the heart of Edward Gray!”

Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue

made at The Cock.

First published 1842. The final text was that of 1853, which has not

been altered since, except that in stanza 29 the two “we’s” in the

first line and the “thy” in the third line are not in later editions

italicised. The Cock Tavern, No. 201 Fleet Street, on the north side of

Fleet Street, stood opposite the Temple and was of great antiquity,

going back nearly 300 years. Strype, bk. iv., h. 117, describes it as

“a noted public-house,” and Pepys’ _Diary_, 23rd April, 1668, speaks of

himself as having been “mighty merry there”. The old carved

chimney-piece was of the age of James I., and the gilt bird over the

portal was the work of Grinling Gibbons. When Tennyson wrote this poem

it was the favourite resort of templars, journalists and literary

people generally, as it had long been. But the old place is now a thing

of the past. On the evening of 10th April, 1886, it closed its doors

for ever after an existence of nearly 300 years. There is an admirable

description of it, signed A. J. M., in _Notes and Queries_, seventh

series, vol. i., 442-6. I give a short extract:

“At the end of a long room beyond the skylight which, except a feeble

side window, was its only light in the daytime, was a door that led

past a small lavatory and up half a dozen narrow steps to the kitchen,

one of the strangest and grimmest old kitchens you ever saw. Across a

mighty hatch, thronged with dishes, you looked into it and beheld there

the white-jacketed man-cook, served by his two robust and red-armed

kitchen maids. For you they were preparing chops, pork chops in winter,

lamb chops in spring, mutton chops always, and steaks and sausages, and

kidneys and potatoes, and poached eggs and Welsh rabbits, and stewed

cheese, the special glory of the house. That was the _menu_ and men

were the only guests. But of late years, as innovations often precede a

catastrophe, two new things were introduced, vegetables and women. Both

were respectable and both were good, but it was felt, especially by the

virtuous Smurthwaite, that they were _de trop_ in a place so masculine

and so carnivorous.”

O plump head-waiter at The Cock,

To which I most resort,

How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.

Go fetch a pint of port:

But let it not be such as that

You set before chance-comers,

But such whose father-grape grew fat

On Lusitanian summers.

No vain libation to the Muse,

But may she still be kind,

And whisper lovely words, and use

Her influence on the mind,

To make me write my random rhymes,

Ere they be half-forgotten;

Nor add and alter, many times,

Till all be ripe and rotten.

I pledge her, and she comes and dips

Her laurel in the wine,

And lays it thrice upon my lips,

These favour’d lips of mine;

Until the charm have power to make

New life-blood warm the bosom,

And barren commonplaces break

In full and kindly[1] blossom.

I pledge her silent at the board;

Her gradual fingers steal

And touch upon the master-chord

Of all I felt and feel.

Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,

And phantom hopes assemble;

And that child’s heart within the man’s

Begins to move and tremble.

Thro’ many an hour of summer suns

By many pleasant ways,

Against its fountain upward runs

The current of my days:[2]

I kiss the lips I once have kiss’d;

The gas-light wavers dimmer;

And softly, thro’ a vinous mist,

My college friendships glimmer.

I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,

Unboding critic-pen,

Or that eternal want of pence,

Which vexes public men,

Who hold their hands to all, and cry

For that which all deny them—

Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,

And all the world go by them.

Ah yet, tho’[3] all the world forsake,

Tho’[3] fortune clip my wings,

I will not cramp my heart, nor take

Half-views of men and things.

Let Whig and Tory stir their blood;

There must be stormy weather;

But for some true result of good

All parties work together.

Let there be thistles, there are grapes;

If old things, there are new;

Ten thousand broken lights and shapes,

Yet glimpses of the true.

Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme,

We lack not rhymes and reasons,

As on this whirligig of Time[4]

We circle with the seasons.

This earth is rich in man and maid;

With fair horizons bound:

This whole wide earth of light and shade

Comes out, a perfect round.

High over roaring Temple-bar,

And, set in Heaven’s third story,

I look at all things as they are,

But thro’ a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honour’d by the guest

Half-mused, or reeling-ripe,

The pint, you brought me, was the best

That ever came from pipe.

But tho’[5] the port surpasses praise,

My nerves have dealt with stiffer.

Is there some magic in the place?

Or do my peptics differ?

For since I came to live and learn,

No pint of white or red

Had ever half the power to turn

This wheel within my head,

Which bears a season’d brain about,

Unsubject to confusion,

Tho’[5] soak’d and saturate, out and out,

Thro’ every convolution.

For I am of a numerous house,

With many kinsmen gay,

Where long and largely we carouse

As who shall say me nay:

Each month, a birthday coming on,

We drink defying trouble,

Or sometimes two would meet in one,

And then we drank it double;

Whether the vintage, yet unkept,

Had relish, fiery-new,

Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept,

As old as Waterloo;

Or stow’d (when classic Canning died)

In musty bins and chambers,

Had cast upon its crusty side

The gloom of ten Decembers.

The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is!

She answer’d to my call,

She changes with that mood or this,

Is all-in-all to all:

She lit the spark within my throat,

To make my blood run quicker,

Used all her fiery will, and smote

Her life into the liquor.

And hence this halo lives about

The waiter’s hands, that reach

To each his perfect pint of stout,

His proper chop to each.

He looks not like the common breed

That with the napkin dally;

I think he came like Ganymede,

From some delightful valley.

The Cock was of a larger egg

Than modern poultry drop,

Stept forward on a firmer leg,

And cramm’d a plumper crop;

Upon an ampler dunghill trod,

Crow’d lustier late and early,

Sipt wine from silver, praising God,

And raked in golden barley.

A private life was all his joy,

Till in a court he saw

A something-pottle-bodied boy,

That knuckled at the taw:

He stoop’d and clutch’d him, fair and good,

Flew over roof and casement:

His brothers of the weather stood

Stock-still for sheer amazement.

But he, by farmstead, thorpe and spire,

And follow’d with acclaims,

A sign to many a staring shire,

Came crowing over Thames.

Right down by smoky Paul’s they bore,

Till, where the street grows straiter,[6]

One fix’d for ever at the door,

And one became head-waiter.

But whither would my fancy go?

How out of place she makes

The violet of a legend blow

Among the chops and steaks!

’Tis but a steward of the can,

One shade more plump than common;

As just and mere a serving-man

As any born of woman.

I ranged too high: what draws me down

Into the common day?

Is it the weight of that half-crown,

Which I shall have to pay?

For, something duller than at first,

Nor wholly comfortable,

I sit (my empty glass reversed),

And thrumming on the table: