Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Beside her are laid

  Her mattock and spade,

  For she hath half delved her own deep grave.

  Alone she is there:

  The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose;

  Her shoulders are bare;

  Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews.

  II

  Death standeth by;

  She will not die;

  With glazed eye

  She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep;

  Ever alone

  She maketh her moan:

  She cannot speak; she can only weep;

  For she will not hope.

  The thick snow falls on her flake by flake,

  The dull wave mourns down the slope,

  The world will not change, and her heart will not break.

  Song: A Spirit haunts the year’s last hours

  First printed in 1830.

  The poem was written in the garden at the Old Rectory, Somersby; an autumn scene there which it faithfully describes. This poem seems to have haunted Poe, a fervent admirer of Tennyson’s early poems.

  I

  A Spirit haunts the year’s last hours

  Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:

  To himself he talks;

  For at eventide, listening earnestly,

  At his work you may hear him sob and sigh

  In the walks;

  Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

  Of the mouldering flowers:

  Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

  Over its grave i’ the earth so chilly;

  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

  II

  The air is damp, and hush’d, and close,

  As a sick man’s room when he taketh repose

  An hour before death;

  My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves

  At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,

  And the breath

  Of the fading edges of box beneath,

  And the year’s last rose.

  Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

  Over its grave i’ the earth so chilly;

  Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

  Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

  Adeline

  First printed in 1830.

  I

  Mystery of mysteries,

  Faintly smiling Adeline,

  Scarce of earth nor all divine,

  Nor unhappy, nor at rest,

  But beyond expression fair

  With thy floating flaxen hair;

  Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes

  Take the heart from out my breast.

  Wherefore those dim looks of thine,

  Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

  II

  Whence that aery bloom of thine,

  Like a lily which the sun

  Looks thro’ in his sad decline,

  And a rose-bush leans upon,

  Thou that faintly smilest still,

  As a Naïad in a well,

  Looking at the set of day,

  Or a phantom two hours old

  Of a maiden passed away,

  Ere the placid lips be cold?

  Wherefore those faint smiles of thine,

  Spiritual Adeline?

  III

  What hope or fear or joy is thine?

  Who talketh with thee, Adeline?

  For sure thou art not all alone:

  Do beating hearts of salient springs

  Keep measure with thine own?

  Hast thou heard the butterflies

  What they say betwixt their wings?

  Or in stillest evenings

  With what voice the violet woos

  To his heart the silver dews?

  Or when little airs arise,

  How the merry bluebell rings

  To the mosses underneath?

  Hast thou look’d upon the breath

  Of the lilies at sunrise?

  Wherefore that faint smile of thine,

  Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

  IV

  Some honey-converse feeds thy mind,

  Some spirit of a crimson rose

  In love with thee forgets to close

  His curtains, wasting odorous sighs

  All night long on darkness blind.

  What aileth thee? whom waitest thou

  With thy soften’d, shadow’d brow,

  And those dew-lit eyes of thine,

  Thou faint smiler, Adeline?

  V

  Lovest thou the doleful wind

  When thou gazest at the skies?

  Doth the low-tongued Orient

  Wander from the side of the morn,

  Dripping with Sabsean spice

  On thy pillow, lowly bent

  With melodious airs lovelorn,

  Breathing Light against thy face,

  While his locks a-dropping twined

  Round thy neck in subtle ring

  Make a carcanet of rays,

  And ye talk together still,

  In the language wherewith Spring

  Letters cowslips on the hill?

  Hence that look and smile of thine,

  Spiritual Adeline.

  A Character

  First printed in 1830.

  The only authoritative light thrown on the person here described is what the present Lord Tennyson gives, who tells us that “the then well-known Cambridge orator S was partly described”. He was “a very plausible, parliament-like, self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society “. The character reminds us of Wordsworth’s Moralist. See Poet’s Epitaph;

  One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling,

  Nor form nor feeling, great nor small;

  A reasoning, self-sufficient thing,

  An intellectual all in all.

  Shakespeare’s fop, too (Hotspur’s speech, Henry IV., i., i., 2), seems to have suggested a touch or two.

  With a half-glance upon the sky

  At night he said, “The wanderings

  Of this most intricate Universe

  Teach me the nothingness of things”.

  Yet could not all creation pierce

  Beyond the bottom of his eye.

  He spake of beauty: that the dull

  Saw no divinity in grass,

  Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;

  Then looking as ‘twere in a glass,

  He smooth’d his chin and sleek’d his hair,

  And said the earth was beautiful.

  He spake of virtue: not the gods

  More purely, when they wish to charm

  Pallas and Juno sitting by:

  And with a sweeping of the arm,

  And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye,

  Devolved his rounded periods.

  Most delicately hour by hour

  He canvass’d human mysteries,

  And trod on silk, as if the winds

  Blew his own praises in his eyes,

  And stood aloof from other minds

  In impotence of fancied power.

  With lips depress’d as he were meek,

  Himself unto himself he sold:

  Upon himself himself did feed:

  Quiet, dispassionate, and cold,

  And other than his form of creed,

  With chisell’d features clear and sleek.

  Song “The lintwhite and the throstlecock...”

  I

  The lintwhite and the throstlecock

  Have voices sweet and clear;

  All in the bloomed May.

  They from the blosmy brere

  Call to the fleeting year,

  If that he would them hear

  And stay. Alas! that one so beautiful

  Should have so dull an ear.

  II

  Fair year, fair year, thy children call,

  But thou art deaf as death;

  All in the bloomèd May.

  When thy light perisheth

  That fr
om thee issueth,

  Our life evanisheth: Oh! stay.

  Alas! that lips so cruel-dumb

  Should have so sweet a breath!

  III

  Fair year, with brows of royal love

  Thou comest, as a king,

  All in the bloomèd May.

  Thy golden largess fling,

  And longer hear us sing;

  Though thou art fleet of wing,

  Yet stay. Alas! that eyes so full of light

  Should be so wandering!

  IV

  Thy locks are all of sunny sheen

  In rings of gold yronne,

  All in the bloomèd May,

  We pri’thee pass not on;

  If thou dost leave the sun,

  Delight is with thee gone, Oh! stay.

  Thou art the fairest of thy feres,

  We pri’thee pass not on.

  Song “Every day hath its night...”

  I

  Every day hath its night:

  Every night its morn:

  Thorough dark and bright

  Wingèd hours are borne;

  Ah! welaway!

  Seasons flower and fade;

  Golden calm and storm

  Mingle day by day.

  There is no bright form

  Doth not cast a shade ¬

  Ah! welaway!

  II

  When we laugh, and our mirth

  Apes the happy vein,

  We’re so kin to earth,

  Pleasaunce fathers pain ¬

  Ah! welaway!

  Madness laugheth loud:

  Laughter bringeth tears:

  Eyes are worn away

  Till the end of fears

  Cometh in the shroud,

  Ah! welaway!

  III

  All is change, woe or weal;

  Joy is Sorrow’s brother;

  Grief and gladness steal

  Symbols of each other;

  Ah! welaway!

  Larks in heaven’s cope

  Sing: the culvers mourn

  All the livelong day.

  Be not all forlorn;

  Let us weep, in hope ¬

  Ah! welaway!

  The Poet

  First printed in 1830.

  In this poem we have the first grand note struck by Tennyson, the first poem exhibiting the of the true poet.

  The poet in a golden clime was born,

  With golden stars above;

  Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

  The love of love.

  He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill,

  He saw thro’ his own soul.

  The marvel of the everlasting will,

  An open scroll,

  Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded

  The secretest walks of fame:

  The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed

  And wing’d with flame, ¬

  Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue,

  And of so fierce a flight,

  From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung,

  Filling with light

  And vagrant melodies the winds which bore

  Them earthward till they lit;

  Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower,

  The fruitful wit

  Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew

  Where’er they fell, behold,

  Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew

  A flower all gold,

  And bravely furnish’d all abroad to fling

  The winged shafts of truth,

  To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring

  Of Hope and Youth.

  So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,

  Tho’ one did fling the fire.

  Heaven flow’d upon the soul in many dreams

  Of high desire.

  Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world

  Like one great garden show’d,

  And thro’ the wreaths of floating dark upcurl’d,

  Rare sunrise flow’d.

  And Freedom rear’d in that august sunrise

  Her beautiful bold brow,

  When rites and forms before his burning eyes

  Melted like snow.

  There was no blood upon her maiden robes

  Sunn’d by those orient skies;

  But round about the circles of the globes

  Of her keen eyes

  And in her raiment’s hem was traced in flame

  WISDOM, a name to shake

  All evil dreams of power a sacred name.

  And when she spake,

  Her words did gather thunder as they ran,

  And as the lightning to the thunder

  Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,

  Making earth wonder,

  So was their meaning to her words.

  No sword

  Of wrath her right arm whirl’d,

  But one poor poet’s scroll, and with his word

  She shook the world.

  The Poet’s Mind

  A companion poem to the preceding. After line 7 in 1830 appears this stanza, afterwards omitted:

  Clear as summer mountain streams,

  Bright as the inwoven beams,

  Which beneath their crisping sapphire

  In the midday, floating o’er

  The golden sands, make evermore

  To a blossom-starrèd shore.

  Hence away, unhallowed laughter!

  I

  Vex not thou the poet’s mind

  With thy shallow wit:

  Vex not thou the poet’s mind;

  For thou canst not fathom it.

  Clear and bright it should be ever,

  Flowing like a crystal river;

  Bright as light, and clear as wind.

  II

  Dark-brow’d sophist, come not anear;

  All the place is holy ground;

  Hollow smile and frozen sneer

  Come not here.

  Holy water will I pour

  Into every spicy flower

  Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.

  The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.

  In your eye there is death,

  There is frost in your breath

  Which would blight the plants.

  Where you stand you cannot hear

  From the groves within

  The wild-bird’s din.

  In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants,

  It would fall to the ground if you came in.

  In the middle leaps a fountain

  Like sheet lightning,

  Ever brightening

  With a low melodious thunder;

  All day and all night it is ever drawn

  From the brain of the purple mountain

  Which stands in the distance yonder:

  It springs on a level of bowery lawn,

  And the mountain draws it from Heaven above,

  And it sings a song of undying love;

  And yet, tho’ its voice be so clear and full,

  You never would hear it; your ears are so dull;

  So keep where you are: you are foul with sin;

  It would shrink to the earth if you came in.

  Nothing Will Die

  Reprinted without any important alteration among the Juvenilia in 1871 and onward. No change made except that “through” is spelt “thro’,” and in the last line “and” is substituted for “all”.

  When will the stream be aweary of flowing

  Under my eye? When will the wind be aweary of blowing

  Over the sky? When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?

  When will the heart be aweary of beating? And nature die?

  Never, oh! never, nothing will die?

  The stream flows,

  The wind blows,

  The cloud fleets,

  The heart beats,

  Nothing will die.

  No
thing will die;

  All things will change

  Through eternity.

  ‘Tis the world’s winter;

  Autumn and summer

  Are gone long ago;

  Earth is dry to the centre,

  But spring, a new comer,

  A spring rich and strange,

  Shall make the winds blow

  Round and round,

  Through and through,

  Here and there,

  Till the air

  And the ground

  Shall be filled with life anew.

  The world was never made;

  It will change, but it will not fade.

  So let the wind range;

  For even and morn

  Ever will be

  Through eternity.

  Nothing was born;

  Nothing will die;

  All things will change.

  All Things Will Die

  Reprinted among Juvenilia in 1872 and onward, without alteration.

  Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

  Under my eye;

  Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

  Over the sky.

  One after another the white clouds are fleeting;

  Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

  Full merrily;

  Yet all things must die.

  The stream will cease to flow;

  The wind will cease to blow;

  The clouds will cease to fleet;

  The heart will cease to beat;

  For all things must die.

  All things must die.

  Spring will come never more.

  Oh! vanity!

  Death waits at the door.

  See! our friends are all forsaking

  The wine and the merrymaking.

  We are called we must go.

  Laid low, very low,

  In the dark we must lie.

  The merry glees are still;

  The voice of the bird

  Shall no more be heard,

  Nor the wind on the hill.

  Oh! misery!

  Hark! death is calling

  While I speak to ye,

  The jaw is falling,

  The red cheek paling,

  The strong limbs failing;

  Ice with the warm blood mixing;

  The eyeballs fixing.

  Nine times goes the passing bell:

  Ye merry souls, farewell.

  The old earth

  Had a birth,

  As all men know,

  Long ago.

  And the old earth must die.

  So let the warm winds range,

  And the blue wave beat the shore;

  For even and morn

  Ye will never see

  Through eternity.

  All things were born.

  Ye will come never more,

  For all things must die.

  Hero to Leander

  Oh go not yet, my love,

  The night is dark and vast;

  The white moon is hid in her heaven above,

  And the waves climb high and fast.

  Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again,