Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series
Page 24
I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise,
One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d;
A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes,
Brow-bound with burning gold.
She, flashing forth a haughty smile, began:
“I govern’d men by change, and so I sway’d
All moods. Tis long since I have seen a man.
Once, like the moon, I made
“The ever-shifting currents of the blood
According to my humour ebb and flow.
I have no men to govern in this wood:
That makes my only woe.
“Nay yet it chafes me that I could not bend
One will; nor tame and tutor with mine eye
That dull cold-blooded Caesar. Prythee, friend,
Where is Mark Antony?
“The man, my lover, with whom I rode sublime
On Fortune’s neck: we sat as God by God:
The Nilus would have risen before his time
And flooded at our nod.
“We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
Lamps which outburn’d Canopus. O my life In Egypt!
O the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife,
“And the wild kiss, when fresh from war’s alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailèd Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!
“And there he died: and when I heard my name
Sigh’d forth with life, I would not brook my fear
Of the other: with a worm I balk’d his fame.
What else was left? look here!”
(With that she tore her robe apart, and half
The polish’d argent of her breast to sight
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh,
Showing the aspick’s bite.)
“I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found
Me lying dead, my crown about my brows,
A name for ever! lying robed and crown’d,
Worthy a Roman spouse.”
Her warbling voice, a lyre of widest range
Struck by all passion, did fall down and glance
From tone to tone, and glided thro’ all change
Of liveliest utterance.
When she made pause I knew not for delight;
Because with sudden motion from the ground
She raised her piercing orbs, and fill’d with light
The interval of sound.
Still with their fires Love tipt his keenest darts;
As once they drew into two burning rings
All beams of Love, melting the mighty hearts
Of captains and of kings.
Slowly my sense undazzled. Then I heard
A noise of some one coming thro’ the lawn,
And singing clearer than the crested bird,
That claps his wings at dawn.
“The torrent brooks of hallow’d Israel
From craggy hollows pouring, late and soon,
Sound all night long, in falling thro’ the dell,
Far-heard beneath the moon.
“The balmy moon of blessed Israel
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splinter’d crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine.”
As one that museth where broad sunshine laves
The lawn by some cathedral, thro’ the door
Hearing the holy organ rolling waves
Of sound on roof and floor,
Within, and anthem sung, is charm’d and tied
To where he stands, so stood I, when that flow
Of music left the lips of her that died
To save her father’s vow;
The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
A maiden pure; as when she went along
From Mizpeh’s tower’d gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and with song.
My words leapt forth: “Heaven heads the count of crimes
With that wild oath”. She render’d answer high:
“Not so, nor once alone; a thousand times
I would be born and die.
“Single I grew, like some green plant, whose root
Creeps to the garden water-pipes beneath,
Feeding the flower; but ere my flower to fruit
Changed, I was ripe for death.
“My God, my land, my father these did move
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave,
Lower’d softly with a threefold cord of love
Down to a silent grave.
“And I went mourning, ‘No fair Hebrew boy
Shall smile away my maiden blame among
The Hebrew mothers’ emptied of all joy,
Leaving the dance and song,
“Leaving the olive-gardens far below,
Leaving the promise of my bridal bower,
The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow
Beneath the battled tower
“The light white cloud swam over us. Anon
We heard the lion roaring from his den;
We saw the large white stars rise one by one,
Or, from the darken’d glen,
“Saw God divide the night with flying flame,
And thunder on the everlasting hills.
I heard Him, for He spake, and grief became
A solemn scorn of ills.
“When the next moon was roll’d into the sky,
Strength came to me that equall’d my desire.
How beautiful a thing it was to die
For God and for my sire!
“It comforts me in this one thought to dwell,
That I subdued me to my father’s will;
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell,
Sweetens the spirit still.
“Moreover it is written that my race
Hew’d Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth.” Here her face
Glow’d, as I look’d at her.
She lock’d her lips: she left me where I stood:
“Glory to God,” she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning-star.
Losing her carol I stood pensively,
As one that from a casement leans his head,
When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly,
And the old year is dead.
“Alas! alas!” a low voice, full of care,
Murmur’d beside me: “Turn and look on me:
I am that Rosamond, whom men call fair,
If what I was I be.
“Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor!
O me, that I should ever see the light!
Those dragon eyes of anger’d Eleanor
Do haunt me, day and night.”
She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust:
To whom the Egyptian: “O, you tamely died!
You should have clung to Fulvia’s waist, and thrust
The dagger thro’ her side”.
With that sharp sound the white dawn’s creeping beams,
Stol’n to my brain, dissolved the mystery
Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams
Ruled in the eastern sky.
Morn broaden’d on the borders of the dark,
Ere I saw her, who clasp’d in her last trance
Her murder’d father’s head, or Joan of Arc,
A light of ancient France;
Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death,
Who kneeling, with one arm about her king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,
Sweet as new buds in Spring.
No memory labours longer from the deep
Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore
That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep
To gather and tell o’er
/> Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain
Compass’d, how eagerly I sought to strike
Into that wondrous track of dreams again!
But no two dreams are like.
As when a soul laments, which hath been blest,
Desiring what is mingled with past years,
In yearnings that can never be exprest
By sighs or groans or tears;
Because all words, tho’ cull’d with choicest art,
Failing to give the bitter of the sweet,
Wither beneath the palate, and the heart
Faints, faded by its heat.
Song “Who can say...?”
Who can say
Why To-day
To-morrow will be yesterday?
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet, recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.
Margaret
First printed in 1833.
Another of Tennyson’s delicious fancy portraits, the twin sister to Adeline.
1
O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,
What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?
Who lent you, love, your mortal dower
Of pensive thought and aspect pale,
Your melancholy sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower?
From the westward-winding flood,
From the evening-lighted wood,
From all things outward you have won
A tearful grace, as tho’ you stood
Between the rainbow and the sun.
The very smile before you speak,
That dimples your transparent cheek,
Encircles all the heart, and feedeth
The senses with a still delight
Of dainty sorrow without sound,
Like the tender amber round,
Which the moon about her spreadeth,
Moving thro’ a fleecy night.
2
You love, remaining peacefully,
To hear the murmur of the strife,
But enter not the toil of life.
Your spirit is the calmed sea,
Laid by the tumult of the fight.
You are the evening star, alway
Remaining betwixt dark and bright:
Lull’d echoes of laborious day
Come to you, gleams of mellow light
Float by you on the verge of night.
3
What can it matter, Margaret,
What songs below the waning stars
The lion-heart, Plantagenet,
Sang looking thro’ his prison bars?
Exquisite Margaret, who can tell
The last wild thought of Chatelet,
Just ere the falling axe did part
The burning brain from the true heart,
Even in her sight he loved so well?
4
A fairy shield your Genius made
And gave you on your natal day.
Your sorrow, only sorrow’s shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
You move not in such solitudes,
You are not less divine,
But more human in your moods,
Than your twin-sister, Adeline.
Your hair is darker, and your eyes
Touch’d with a somewhat darker hue,
And less aerially blue,
But ever trembling thro’ the dew
Of dainty-woeful sympathies.
5
O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,
Come down, come down, and hear me speak:
Tie up the ringlets on your cheek:
The sun is just about to set.
The arching lines are tall and shady,
And faint, rainy lights are seen,
Moving in the leavy beech.
Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady,
Where all day long you sit between
Joy and woe, and whisper each.
Or only look across the lawn,
Look out below your bower-eaves,
Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn
Upon me thro’ the jasmine-leaves.
Kate
Reprinted without alteration among the Juvenilia in 1895.
I know her by her angry air,
Her brightblack eyes, her brightblack hair,
Her rapid laughters wild and shrill,
As laughter of the woodpecker
From the bosom of a hill.
‘Tis Kate she sayeth what she will;
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue,
Clear as the twanging of a harp.
Her heart is like a throbbing star.
Kate hath a spirit ever strung
Like a new bow, and bright and sharp
As edges of the scymetar.
Whence shall she take a fitting mate?
For Kate no common love will feel;
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate,
As pure and true as blades of steel.
Kate saith “the world is void of might”.
Kate saith “the men are gilded flies”.
Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;
Kate will not hear of lover’s sighs.
I would I were an armèd knight,
Far famed for wellwon enterprise,
And wearing on my swarthy brows
The garland of new-wreathed emprise:
For in a moment I would pierce
The blackest files of clanging fight,
And strongly strike to left and right,
In dreaming of my lady’s eyes.
Oh! Kate loves well the bold and fierce;
But none are bold enough for Kate,
She cannot find a fitting mate.
Sonnet: “Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar...”
Written, on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.
Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar
The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.
Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;
Break through your iron shackles fling them far.
O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar
Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;
When even to Moscow’s cupolas were rolled
The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more
Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before
Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,
Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore
Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.
Poland
Reprinted without alteration in 1872, except the removal of italics in “now” among the Early Sonnets.
How long, O God, shall men be ridden down,
And trampled under by the last and least
Of men? The heart of Poland hath not ceased
To quiver, tho’ her sacred blood doth drown
The fields; and out of every smouldering town
Cries to Thee, lest brute Power be increased,
Till that o’ergrown Barbarian in the East
Transgress his ample bound to some new crown:
Cries to thee, “Lord, how long shall these things be?
How long this icyhearted Muscovite
Oppress the region?” Us, O Just and Good,
Forgive, who smiled when she was torn in three;
Us, who stand now, when we should aid the right
A matter to be wept with tears of blood!
To –– (“As when, with downcast eyes...”)
Reprinted without alteration as first of the Early Sonnets in 1872; subsequently in the twelfth line “That tho’” was substituted for “Altho’,” and the last line was altered to
“And either lived in either’s heart and speech,”
and “hath” was not italicised.
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, “All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where”.
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each
Altho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And each had lived in the other’s mind and speech.
O Darling Room
I
O darling room, my heart’s delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
II
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter’s vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene.
III
Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
To Christopher North
You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
The Death of the Old Year
Only one alteration has been made in this poem, in line 41, where in 1842 “one’ was altered to” twelve “.
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.
He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend, and a true, true-love,
And the New-year will take ‘em away.