Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  And all the separate Edens of this earth,

  To centre in this place and time. I listen’d,

  And her words stole with most prevailing sweetness

  Into my heart, as thronged fancies come,

  All unawares, into the poet’s brain;

  Or as the dew-drops on the petal hung,

  When summer winds break their soft sleep with sighs,

  Creep down into the bottom of the flower.

  Her words were like a coronal of wild blooms

  Strung in the very negligence of Art,

  Or in the art of Nature, where each rose

  Doth faint upon the bosom of the other,

  Flooding its angry cheek with odorous tears.

  So each with each inwoven lived with each,

  And were in union more than double-sweet.

  What marvel my Camilla told me all?

  It was so happy an hour, so sweet a place,

  And I was as the brother of her blood,

  And by that name was wont to live in her speech,

  Dear name! which had too much of nearness in it

  And heralded the distance of this time.

  At first her voice was very sweet and low,

  As tho’ she were afeard of utterance;

  But in the onward current of her speech,

  (As echoes of the hollow-banked brooks

  Are fashioned by the channel which they keep)

  His words did of their meaning borrow sound,

  Her cheek did catch the colour of her words,

  I heard and trembled, yet I could but hear;

  My heart paused, — my raised eyelids would not fall,

  But still I kept my eyes upon the sky.

  I seem’d the only part of Time stood still,

  And saw the motion of all other things;

  While her words, syllable by syllable,

  Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear

  Fell, and I wish’d, yet wish’d her not to speak,

  But she spoke on, for I did name no wish.

  What marvel my Camilla told me all

  Her maiden dignities of Hope and Love,

  ‘Perchance’ she said ‘return’d.’ Even then the stars

  Did tremble in their stations as I gazed;

  But she spake on, for I did name no wish,

  No wish — no hope. Hope was not wholly dead,

  But breathing hard at the approach of Death,

  Updrawn in expectation of her change —

  Camilla, my Camilla, who was mine

  No longer in the dearest use of mine —

  The written secrets of her inmost soul

  Lay like an open scroll before my view,

  And my eyes read, they read aright, her heart

  Was Lionel’s: it seem’d as tho’ a link

  Of some light chain within my inmost frame

  Was riven in twain: that life I heeded not

  Flow’d from me, and the darkness of the grave,

  The darkness of the grave and utter night,

  Did swallow up my vision: at her feet,

  Even the feet of her I loved, I fell,

  Smit with exceeding sorrow unto death.

  Then had the earth beneath me yawning given

  Sign of convulsion; and tho’ horrid rifts

  Sent up the moaning of unhappy spirits

  Imprison’d in her centre, with the heat

  Of their infolding element; had the angels,

  The watchers at heaven’s gate, push’d them apart,

  And from the golden threshold had down-roll’d

  Their heaviest thunder, I had lain as still,

  And blind and motionless as then I lay!

  White as quench’d ashes, cold as were the hopes

  Of my lorn love! What happy air shall woo

  The wither’d leaf fall’n in the woods, or blasted

  Upon this bough? a lightning stroke had come

  Even from that Heaven in whose light I bloom’d

  And taken away the greenness of my life,

  The blossom and the fragrance. Who was cursed

  But I? who miserable but I? even Misery

  Forgot herself in that extreme distress,

  And with the overdoing of her part

  Did fall away into oblivion.

  The night in pity took away my day

  Because my grief as yet was newly born,

  Of too weak eyes to look upon the light,

  And with the hasty notice of the ear,

  Frail life was startled from the tender love

  Of him she brooded over. Would I had lain

  Until the pleached ivy tress had wound

  Round my worn limbs, and the wild briar had driven

  Its knotted thorns thro’ my unpaining brows

  Leaning its roses on my faded eyes.

  The wind had blown above me, and the rain

  Had fall’n upon me, and the gilded snake

  Had nestled in this bosomthrone of love,

  But I had been at rest for evermore.

  Long time entrancement held me: all too soon,

  Life (like a wanton too-officious friend

  Who will not hear denial, vain and rude

  With proffer of unwished for services)

  Entering all the avenues of sense,

  Pass’d thro’ into his citadel, the brain

  With hated warmth of apprehensiveness:

  And first the chillness of the mountain stream

  Smote on my brow, and then I seem’d to hear

  Its murmur, as the drowning seaman hears,

  Who with his head below the surface dropt,

  Listens the dreadful murmur indistinct

  Of the confused seas, and knoweth not

  Beyond the sound he lists: and then came in

  O’erhead the white light of the weary moon,

  Diffused and molten into flaky cloud.

  Was my sight drunk, that it did shape to me

  Him who should own that name? or had my fancy

  So lethargised discernment in the sense,

  That she did act the step-dame to mine eyes,

  Warping their nature, till they minister’d

  Unto her swift conceits? ‘Twere better thus

  If so be that the memory of that sound

  With mighty evocation, had updrawn

  The fashion and the phantasm of the form

  It should attach to. There was no such thing. —

  It was the man she loved, even Lionel,

  The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel,

  All joy; who drew the happy atmosphere

  Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears,

  To him the honey dews of orient hope.

  Oh! rather had some loathly ghastful brow,

  Half-bursten from the shroud, in cere cloth bound,

  The dead skin withering on the fretted bone,

  The very spirit of Paleness made still paler

  By the shuddering moonlight, fix’d his eyes on mine

  Horrible with the anger and the heat

  Of the remorseful soul alive within,

  And damn’d unto his loathed tenement.

  Methinks I could have sooner met that gaze!

  Oh, how her choice did leap forth from his eyes!

  Oh, how her love did clothe itself in smiles

  About his lips! This was the very arch-mock

  And insolence of uncontrolled Fate,

  When the effect weigh’d seas upon my head

  To twit me with the cause.

  Why how was this?

  Could he not walk what paths he chose, nor breathe

  What airs he pleased! Was not the wide world free,

  With all her interchange of hill and plain

  To him as well as me? I know not, faith:

  But Misery, like a fretful, wayward child,

  Refused to look his author in the face,

  Must he come my way too? Was not the South,

  Th
e East, the West, all open, if he had fall’n

  In love in twilight? Why should he come my way,

  Robed in those robes of light I must not wear,

  With that great crown of beams about his brows?

  Come like an angel to a damned soul?

  To tell him of the bliss he had with God;

  Come like a careless and a greedy heir,

  That scarce can wait the reading of the will

  Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood

  To be invaded rudely, and not rather

  A sacred, secret, unapproached woe

  Unspeakable? I was shut up with grief;

  She took the body of my past delight,

  Narded, and swathed and balm’d it for herself,

  And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre,

  Where man had never lain. I was led mute

  Into her temple like a sacrifice;

  I was the high-priest in her holiest place,

  Not to be loudly broken in upon.

  Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh

  O’erbore the limits of my brain; but he

  Bent o’er me, and my neck his arm upstay’d

  From earth. I thought it was an adder’s fold,

  And once I strove to disengage myself,

  But fail’d, I was so feeble. She was there too:

  She bent above me too: her cheek was pale,

  Oh! very fair and pale: rare pity had stolen

  The living bloom away, as tho’ a red rose

  Should change into a white one suddenly.

  Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn,

  And some few drops of that distressful rain

  Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight,

  And being there they did break forth afresh

  In a new birth, immingled with my own,

  And still bewept my grief. Keeping unchanged

  The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets,

  Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind,

  Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro:

  For in the sudden anguish of her heart

  Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad,

  And onward floating in a full, dark wave,

  Parted on either side her argent neck,

  Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke,

  After my refluent health made tender quest

  Unanswer’d, for I spoke not: for the sound

  Of that dear voice so musically low,

  And now first heard with any sense of pain,

  As it had taken life away before,

  Choked all the syllables that in my throat

  Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks,

  From my full heart: and ever since that hour,

  My voice hath somewhat falter’d — and what wonder

  That when hope died, part of her eloquence

  Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too,

  From his great hoard of happiness distill’d

  Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man,

  That, having always prosper’d in the world,

  Folding his hands deals comfortable words

  To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth,

  Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase,

  Falling in whispers on the sense, address’d

  More to the inward than the outward ear,

  As rain of the midsummer midnight soft

  Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green

  Of the dead spring — such as in other minds

  Had film’d the margents of the recent wound.

  And why was I to darken their pure love,

  If, as I knew, they two did love each other,

  Because my own was darken’d? Why was I

  To stand within the level of their hopes,

  Because my hope was widow’d, like the cur

  In the child’s adage? Did I love Camilla?

  Ye know that I did love her: to this present

  My full-orb’d love hath waned not. Did I love her,

  And could I look upon her tearful eyes?

  Tears wept for me; for me — weep at my grief?

  What had she done to weep — let my heart

  Break rather — whom the gentlest airs of heaven

  Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness.

  Her love did murder mine; what then? she deem’d

  I wore a brother’s mind: she call’d me brother:

  She told me all her love: she shall not weep.

  The brightness of a burning thought awhile

  Battailing with the glooms of my dark will,

  Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself,

  Upon the depths of an unfathom’d woe,

  Reflex of action, starting up at once,

  As men do from a vague and horrid dream,

  And throwing by all consciousness of self,

  In eager haste I shook him by the hand;

  Then flinging myself down upon my knees

  Even where the grass was warm where I had lain,

  I pray’d aloud to God that he would hold

  The hand of blessing over Lionel,

  And her whom he would make his wedded wife,

  Camilla! May their days be golden days,

  And their long life a dream of linked love,

  From which may rude Death never startle them,

  But grow upon them like a glorious vision

  Of unconceived and awful happiness,

  Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and sounds,

  Swallowing its precedent in victory.

  Let them so love that men and boys may say,

  Lo! how they love each other! till their love

  Shall ripen to a proverb unto all,

  Known when their faces are forgot in the land.

  And as for me, Camilla, as for me,

  Think not thy tears will make my name grow green, —

  The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew.

  The course of Hope is dried, — the life o’ the plant —

  They will but sicken the sick plant more.

  Deem then I love thee but as brothers do,

  So shalt thou love me still as sisters do;

  Or if thou dream’st aught farther, dream but how

  I could have loved thee, had there been none else

  To love as lovers, loved again by thee.

  Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spoke,

  When I did see her weep so ruefully;

  For sure my love should ne’er induce the front

  And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments

  Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans

  Feed and envenom, as the milky blood

  Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake.

  Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts,

  And batten on his poisons? Love forbid!

  Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate,

  And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love.

  O Love, if thou be’st Love, dry up these tears

  Shed for the love of Love; for tho’ mine image,

  The subject of thy power, be cold in her,

  Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source

  Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow.

  So Love, arraign’d to judgment and to death,

  Received unto himself a part of blame.

  Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner,

  Who when the woful sentence hath been past,

  And all the clearness of his fame hath gone

  Beneath the shadow of the curse of men,

  First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom awaked

  And looking round upon his tearful friends,

  Forthwith and in his agony conceives

  A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime —

  For whence without some guilt should such grief be?

  So died that hour, and fell into the abys
m

  Of forms outworn, but not to be outworn,

  Who never hail’d another worth the Life

  That made it sensible. So died that hour,

  Like odour wrapt into the winged wind

  Borne into alien lands and far away.

  There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,

  That in the death of love, if e’er they loved,

  On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly

  Above the perilous seas of change and chance;

  Nay, more, holds out the lights of cheerfulness;

  As the tall ship, that many a dreary year

  Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,

  All through the lifelong hours of utter dark,

  Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave.

  For me all other Hopes did sway from that

  Which hung the frailest: falling, they fell too,

  Crush’d link on link into the beaten earth,

  And Love did walk with banish’d Hope no more,

  It was ill-done to part ye, Sisters fair;

  Love’s arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,

  And Hope kiss’d Love, and Love drew in her breath

  In that close kiss, and drank her whisper’d tales.

  They said that Love would die when Hope was gone,

  And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;

  At last she sought out memory, and they trod

  The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,

  And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.

  II

  From that time forth I would not see her more,

  But many weary moons I lived alone —

  Alone, and in the heart of the great forest.

  Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea

  All day I watched the floating isles of shade,

  And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands

  Insensibly I drew her name, until

  The meaning of the letters shot into

  My brain: anon the wanton billow wash’d

  Them over, till they faded like my love.

  The hollow caverns heard me — the black brooks

  Of the mid-forest heard me — the soft winds,

  Laden with thistledown and seeds of flowers,

  Paused in their course to hear me, for my voice

  Was all of thee: the merry linnet knew me,

  The squirrel knew me, and the dragon-fly

  Shot by me like a flash of purple fire.

  The rough briar tore my bleeding palms; the hemlock,

  Brow high, did strike my forehead as I pas’d;

  Yet trod I not the wild-flower in my path,

  Nor bruised the wild-bird’s egg.

  Was this the end?

  Why grew we then together i’ the same plot?

  Why fed we the same fountain? drew the same sun?

  Why were our mothers branches of one stem?

  Why were we one in all things, save in that