Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Old year, you must not go;

  So long as you have been with us,

  Such joy as you have seen with us,

  Old year, you shall not go.

  He froth’d his bumpers to the brim;

  A jollier year we shall not see.

  But tho’ his eyes are waxing dim,

  And tho’ his foes speak ill of him,

  He was a friend to me.

  Old year, you shall not die;

  We did so laugh and cry with you,

  I’ve half a mind to die with you,

  Old year, if you must die.

  He was full of joke and jest,

  But all his merry quips are o’er.

  To see him die, across the waste

  His son and heir doth ride post-haste,

  But he’ll be dead before.

  Every one for his own.

  The night is starry and cold, my friend,

  And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,

  Comes up to take his own.

  How hard he breathes! over the snow

  I heard just now the crowing cock.

  The shadows flicker to and fro:

  The cricket chirps: the light burns low:

  ‘Tis nearly twelve o’clock.

  Shake hands, before you die.

  Old year, we’ll dearly rue for you:

  What is it we can do for you?

  Speak out before you die.

  His face is growing sharp and thin.

  Alack! our friend is gone.

  Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:

  Step from the corpse, and let him in

  That standeth there alone,

  And waiteth at the door.

  There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend,

  And a new face at the door, my friend,

  A new face at the door.

  To J. S.

  This beautiful poem was addressed to James Spedding on the death of his brother Edward.

  The wind, that beats the mountain, blows

  More softly round the open wold,

  And gently comes the world to those

  That are cast in gentle mould.

  And me this knowledge bolder made,

  Or else I had not dared to flow

  In these words toward you, and invade

  Even with a verse your holy woe.

  ‘Tis strange that those we lean on most,

  Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,

  Fall into shadow, soonest lost:

  Those we love first are taken first.

  God gives us love. Something to love

  He lends us; but, when love is grown

  To ripeness, that on which it throve

  Falls off, and love is left alone.

  This is the curse of time. Alas!

  In grief I am not all unlearn’d;

  Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass;

  One went, who never hath return’d.

  He will not smile nor speak to me

  Once more. Two years his chair is seen

  Empty before us. That was he

  Without whose life I had not been.

  Your loss is rarer; for this star

  Rose with you thro’ a little arc

  Of heaven, nor having wander’d far

  Shot on the sudden into dark.

  I knew your brother: his mute dust

  I honour and his living worth:

  A man more pure and bold and just

  Was never born into the earth.

  I have not look’d upon you nigh,

  Since that dear soul hath fall’n asleep.

  Great Nature is more wise than I:

  I will not tell you not to weep.

  And tho’ mine own eyes fill with dew,

  Drawn from the spirit thro’ the brain,

  I will not even preach to you,

  “Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain”.

  Let Grief be her own mistress still.

  She loveth her own anguish deep

  More than much pleasure. Let her will

  Be done to weep or not to weep.

  I will not say “God’s ordinance

  Of Death is blown in every wind”;

  For that is not a common chance

  That takes away a noble mind.

  His memory long will live alone

  In all our hearts, as mournful light

  That broods above the fallen sun,

  And dwells in heaven half the night.

  Vain solace! Memory standing near

  Cast down her eyes, and in her throat

  Her voice seem’d distant, and a tear

  Dropt on the letters as I wrote.

  I wrote I know not what. In truth,

  How should I soothe you anyway,

  Who miss the brother of your youth?

  Yet something I did wish to say:

  For he too was a friend to me:

  Both are my friends, and my true breast

  Bleedeth for both; yet it may be

  That only silence suiteth best.

  Words weaker than your grief would make

  Grief more. ‘Twere better I should cease;

  Although myself could almost take

  The place of him that sleeps in peace.

  Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace:

  Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,

  While the stars burn, the moons increase,

  And the great ages onward roll.

  Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.

  Nothing comes to thee new or strange.

  Sleep full of rest from head to feet;

  Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

  THE LOVER’S TALE. A FRAGMENT.

  It was originally intended by Tennyson that this long poem should form part of his 1833 volume. It was put in type and, according to custom, copies were distributed among his friends, when, on the eve of publication, he decided to omit the poem. Again, in 1869, it was sent to press with a new third part added, and was again withdrawn, the third part only—’The Golden Supper,’ founded on a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron — being published in the volume, ‘The Holy Grail.’ In 1866, 1870 and 1875, attempts had been made by Mr Herne Shepherd to publish editions of The Lover’s Tale, reprinted from stray proof copies of the 1833 printing. Each of these attempts was repressed by Tennyson, and at last in 1879 the complete poem was issued, with an apologetic reference to the necessity of reprinting the poem to prevent its circulation in an unauthorised form. But the 1879 issue is considerably altered from the original issue of 1833, as written by Tennyson in his nineteenth year. Since only as a product of Tennyson’s youth does the poem merit any attention, it has seemed good to reprint it here as originally written.

  THE LOVER’S TALE

  A FRAGMENT

  The Poem of the Lover’s Tale (the lover is supposed to be himself a poet) was written in my nineteenth year, and consequently contains nearly as many faults as words. That I deemed it not wholly unoriginal is my only apology for its publication — an apology lame and poor, and somewhat impertinent to boot: so that if its infirmities meet with more laughter than charity in the world, I shall not raise my voice in its defence. I am aware how deficient the Poem is in point of art, and it is not without considerable misgivings that I have ventured to publish even this fragment of it. ‘Enough,’ says the old proverb, ‘is as good as a feast.’ — (Tennyson’s original introductory note.)

  Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff,

  Filling with purple gloom the vacancies

  Between the tufted hills the sloping seas

  Hung in mid-heaven, and half-way down rare sails,

  White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.

  Oh! pleasant breast of waters, quiet bay,

  Like to a quiet mind in the loud world,

  Where the chafed breakers of the outer sea

  Sunk powerless, even as anger falls aside,

  And withers on the breast of peaceful love,


  Thou didst receive that belt of pines, that fledged

  The hills that watch’d thee, as Love watcheth Love, —

  In thine own essence, and delight thyself

  To make it wholly thine on sunny days.

  Keep thou thy name of ‘Lover’s bay’: See, Sirs,

  Even now the Goddess of the Past, that takes

  The heart, and sometimes toucheth but one string,

  That quivers, and is silent, and sometimes

  Sweeps suddenly all its half-moulder’d chords

  To an old melody, begins to play

  On those first-moved fibres of the brain.

  I come, Great mistress of the ear and eye:

  Oh! lead me tenderly, for fear the mind

  Rain thro’ my sight, and strangling sorrow weigh

  Mine utterance with lameness. Tho’ long years

  Have hallowed out a valley and a gulf

  Betwixt the native land of Love and me,

  Breathe but a little on me, and the sail

  Will draw me to the rising of the sun,

  The lucid chambers of the morning star,

  And East of life.

  Permit me, friend, I prithee,

  To pass my hand across my brows, and muse

  On those dear hills, that nevermore will meet

  The sight that throbs and aches beneath my touch,

  As tho’ there beat a heart in either eye;

  For when the outer lights are darken’d thus,

  The memory’s vision hath a keener edge.

  It grows upon me now — the semicircle

  Of dark blue waters and the narrow fringe

  Of curving beach — its wreaths of dripping green —

  Its pale pink shells — the summer-house aloft

  That open’d on the pines with doors of glass,

  A mountain nest the pleasure boat that rock’d

  Light-green with its own shadow, keel to keel,

  Upon the crispings of the dappled waves

  That blanched upon its side.

  O Love, O Hope,

  They come, they crowd upon me all at once,

  Moved from the cloud of unforgotten things,

  That sometimes on the horizon of the mind

  Lies folded — often sweeps athwart in storm —

  They flash across the darkness of my brain,

  The many pleasant days, the moolit nights,

  The dewy dawnings and the amber eyes,

  When thou and I, Camilla, thou and I

  Were borne about the bay, or safely moor’d

  Beneath some low brow’d cavern, where the wave

  Plash’d sapping its worn ribs (the while without,

  And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine,

  And shook its earthly socket, for we heard,

  In rising and in falling with the tide,

  Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak),

  Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent;

  And mine, with love too high to be express’d

  Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from

  All contemplation of all forms, did pause

  To worship mine own image, laved in light,

  The centre of the splendours, all unworthy

  Of such a shrine — mine image in her eyes,

  By diminution made most glorious,

  Moved with their motions, as those eyes were moved

  With motions of the soul, as my heart beat

  Twice to the melody of hers. Her face

  Was starry-fair, not pale, tenderly flush’d

  As ‘twere with dawn. She was dark-hair’d, dark-eyed;

  Oh, such dark eyes! A single glance of them

  Will govern a whole life from birth to death,

  Careless of all things else, led on with light

  In trances and in visions: look at them,

  You lose yourself in utter ignorance,

  You cannot find their depth; for they go back,

  And farther back, and still withdraw themselves

  Quite into the deep soul, that evermore,

  Fresh springing from her fountains in the brain,

  Still pouring thro’, floods with redundant light

  Her narrow portals.

  Trust me, long ago

  I should have died, if it were possible

  To die in gazing on that perfectness

  Which I do bear within me; I had died

  But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,

  Thine image, like a charm of light and strength

  Upon the waters, pushed me back again

  On these deserted sands of barren life.

  Tho’ from the deep vault, where the heart of hope

  Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark —

  Forgetting who to render beautiful

  Her countenance with quick and healthful blood —

  Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish

  With such a costly casket in the grasp

  Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o’erstepp’d

  The slippery footing of his narrow wit,

  And fall’n away from judgment. Thou art light,

  To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,

  And length of days, and immortality

  Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew’d.

  For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,

  And like all other friends i’ the world, at last

  They grew aweary of her fellowship:

  So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death,

  And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;

  But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,

  A wakeful port’ress and didst parle with Death,

  ‘This is a charmed dwelling which I hold’;

  So Death gave back, and would no further come.

  Yet is my life nor in the present time,

  Nor in the present place. To me alone,

  Pushed from his chair of regal heritage,

  The Present is the vassal of the Past:

  So that, in that I have lived, do I live,

  And cannot die, and am, in having been,

  A portion of the pleasant yesterday,

  Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;

  A body journeying onward, sick with toil,

  The lithe limbs bow’d as with a heavy weight

  And all the senses weaken’d in all save that

  Which, long ago, they had glean’d and garner’d up

  Into the granaries of memory —

  The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,

  Now seam’d and chink’d with years — and all the while

  The light soul twines and mingles with the growths

  Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,

  Married, made one with, molten into all

  The beautiful in Past of act or place.

  Even as the all-enduring camel, driven

  Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,

  Toils onward thro’ the middle moonlight nights,

  Shadow’d and crimson’d with the drifting dust,

  Or when the white heats of the blinding noons

  Beat from the concave sand; yet in him keeps

  A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves,

  To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit

  From bitterness of death.

  Ye ask me, friends,

  When I began to love. How should I tell ye?

  Or from the after fulness of my heart,

  Flow back again unto my slender spring

  And first of love, tho’ every turn and depth

  Between is clearer in my life than all

  Its present flow. Ye know not what ye ask.

  How should the broad and open flower tell

  What sort of bud it was, when press’d together

  In its green sheath, close lapt in silken folds?

  It seemed to keep its sweetness to itself
,

  Yet was not the less sweet for that it seem’d.

  For young Life knows not when young Life was born,

  But takes it all for granted: neither Love,

  Warm in the heart, his cradle can remember

  Love in the womb, but resteth satisfied,

  Looking on her that brought him to the light:

  Or as men know not when they fall asleep

  Into delicious dreams, our other life,

  So know I not when I began to love.

  This is my sum of knowledge — that my love

  Grew with myself — and say rather, was my growth,

  My inward sap, the hold I have on earth,

  My outward circling air wherein I breathe,

  Which yet upholds my life, and evermore

  Was to me daily life and daily death:

  For how should I have lived and not have loved?

  Can ye take off the sweetness from the flower,

  The colour and the sweetness from the rose,

  And place them by themselves? or set apart

  Their motions and their brightness from the stars,

  And then point out the flower or the star?

  Or build a wall betwixt my life and love,

  And tell me where I am? ‘Tis even thus:

  In that I live I love; because I love

  I live: whate’er is fountain to the one

  Is fountain to the other; and whene’er

  Our God unknits the riddle of the one,

  There is no shade or fold of mystery

  Swathing the other.

  Many, many years,

  For they seem many and my most of life,

  And well I could have linger’d in that porch,

  So unproportioned to the dwelling place,

  In the maydews of childhood, opposite

  The flush and dawn of youth, we lived together,

  Apart, alone together on those hills.

  Before he saw my day my father died,

  And he was happy that he saw it not:

  But I and the first daisy on his grave

  From the same clay came into light at once.

  As Love and I do number equal years

  So she, my love, is of an age with me.

  How like each other was the birth of each!

  The sister of my mother — she that bore

  Camilla close beneath her beating heart,

  Which to the imprisoned spirit of the child,

  With its true touched pulses in the flow

  And hourly visitation of the blood,

  Sent notes of preparation manifold,

  And mellow’d echoes of the outer world —

  My mother’s sister, mother of my love,

  Who had a twofold claim upon my heart,

  One twofold mightier than the other was,

  In giving so much beauty to the world,