Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  To flame and sparkle and stream as of old,

  Till all the comets in heaven are cold,

  And all her stars decay.’

  ‘Then take it, love, and put it by;

  This cannot change, nor yet can I.’

  ‘My ringlet, my ringlet,

  That art so golden-gay,

  Now never chilling touch of Time

  Can turn thee silver-gray;

  And a lad may wink, and a girl may hint,

  And a fool may say his say;

  For my doubts and fears were all amiss,

  And I swear henceforth by this and this,

  That a doubt will only come for a kiss,

  And a fear to be kissed away.’

  ‘Then kiss it, love, and put it by:

  If this can change, why so can I.’

  O Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  I kiss’d you night and day,

  And Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  You still are golden-gay,

  But Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  You should be silver-gray:

  For what is this which now I’m told,

  I that took you for true gold,

  She that gave you’s bought and sold,

  Sold, sold.

  O Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  She blush’d a rosy red,

  When Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  She clipt you from her head,

  And Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  She gave you me, and said,

  ‘Come, kiss it, love, and put it by:

  If this can change, why so can I.’

  O fie, you golden nothing, fie

  You golden lie.

  O Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  I count you much to blame,

  For Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  You put me much to shame,

  So Ringlet, O Ringlet,

  I doom you to the flame.

  For what is this which now I learn,

  Has given all my faith a turn?

  Burn, you glossy heretic, burn,

  Burn, burn.

  Song: Home they brought him slain with spears

  This first form of the Song in The Princess (‘Home they brought her warrior dead’) was published only in Selections from Tennyson. London: E. Moxon & Co, 1864.

  Home they brought him slain with spears.

  They brought him home at even-fall:

  All alone she sits and hears

  Echoes in his empty hall,

  Sounding on the morrow.

  The Sun peeped in from open field,

  The boy began to leap and prance,

  Rode upon his father’s lance,

  Beat upon his father’s shield —

  ‘Oh hush, my joy, my sorrow.’

  Lines 1865-1866

  Published in Good Words for March 1, 1868 as a decorative page, with an accompanying full page plate by T. Dalziel. The lines were never reprinted.

  I stood on a tower in the wet,

  And New Year and Old Year met,

  And winds were roaring and blowing;

  And I said, ‘O years that meet in tears,

  Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?

  ‘Science enough and exploring

  Wanderers coming and going

  Matter enough for deploring

  But aught that is worth the knowing?’

  Seas at my feet were flowing

  Waves on the shingle pouring,

  Old Year roaring and blowing

  And New Year blowing and roaring.

  A Welcome to Her Royal Highness Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess of Edinburgh.

  March 7, 1874.

  I.

  THE SON of him with whom we strove for power —

  Whose will is lord thro’ all his world-domain —

  Who made the serf a man, and burst his chain —

  Has given our prince his own imperial Flower,

  Alexandrovna.

  And welcome, Russian flower, a people’s pride,

  To Britain, when her flowers begin to blow !

  From love to love, from home to home you go,

  From mother unto mother, stately bride,

  Marie Alexandrovna!

  II.

  The golden news along the steppes is blown,

  And at thy name the Tartar tents are stirr’d ;

  Elburz and all the Caucasus have heard ;

  And all the sultry palms of India known,

  Alexandrovna.

  The voices of our universal sea

  On capes of Afric as on cliffs of Kent,

  The Maoris and that Isle of Continent,

  And loyal pines of Canada mumur thee,

  Marie Alexandrovna!

  III.

  Fair empires branching, both, in lusty life! —

  Yet Harold’s England fell to Norman swords;

  Yet thine own land has bow’d to Tartar hordes

  Since English Harold gave its throne a wife,

  Alexandrovna!

  For thrones and peoples are as waifs that swing,

  And float or fall, in endless ebb and flow;

  But who love best have best the grace to know

  That Love by right divine is deathless king,

  Marie Alexandrovna!

  IV.

  And Love has led thee to the stranger land,

  Where men are bold and strongly say their say; —

  See, empire upon empire smiles to-day,

  As thou with thy young lover hand in hand

  Alexandrovna

  So now thy fuller life is in the west,

  Whose hand at home was gracious to thy poor:

  Thy name was blest within the narrow door ;

  Here also, Marie, shall thy name be blest,

  Marie Alexandrovna!

  V.

  Shall fears and jealous hatreds flame again?

  Or at thy coming, Princess, everywhere,

  The blue heaven break, and some diviner air

  Breathe thro’ the world and change the hearts of men,

  Alexandrovna?

  But hearts that change not, love that cannot cease,

  And peace be yours, the peace of soul in soul!

  And howsoever this wild world may roll,

  Between your peoples truth and manful peace,

  Alfred — Alexandrovna

  Literary Squabbles

  AH God! the petty fools of rhyme

  That shriek and sweat in pigmy wars

  Before the stony face of Time,

  And look’d at by the silent stars:

  Who hate each other for a song,

  And do their little best to bite

  And pinch their brethren in the throng,

  And scratch the very dead for spite:

  And strain to make an inch of room

  For their sweet selves, and cannot hear

  The sullen Lethe rolling doom

  On them and theirs and all things here:

  When one small touch of Charity

  Could lift them nearer Godlike state

  Than if the crowded Orb should cry

  Like those who cried Diana great:

  And I too talk, and lose the touch

  I talk of. Surely, after all,

  The noblest answer unto such

  Is perfect stillness when they brawl.

  The Higher Pantheism

  THE SUN, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains —

  Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?

  Is not the Vision He? tho’ He be not that which He seems?

  Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

  Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,

  Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?

  Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;

  For is He not all but that which has power to feel ‘I am I’?

  Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom

  Making Him broken gleams, a
nd a stifled splendour and gloom.

  Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet —

  Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

  God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,

  For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.

  Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool;

  For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;

  And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;

  But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He?

  Crossing the Bar

  SUNSET and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

  And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea,

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

  Too full for sound and foam,

  When that which drew from out the boundless deep

  Turns again home.

  Twilight and evening bell,

  And after that the dark!

  And may there be no sadness of farewell,

  When I embark;

  For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

  The flood may bear me far,

  I hope to see my Pilot face to face

  When I have crost the bar.

  Flower in the crannied wall

  FLOWER in the crannied wall,

  I pluck you out of the crannies,

  I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

  Little flower — but if I could understand

  What you are, root and all, and all in all,

  I should know what God and man is.

  Child-Songs

  The City Child.

  DAINTY little maiden, whither would you wander?

  Whither from this pretty home, the home where mother dwells?

  ‘Far and far away,’ said the dainty little maiden,

  ‘All among the gardens, auriculas, anemones,

  Roses and lilies and Canterbury-bells.’

  Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander?

  Whither from this pretty house, this city-house of ours?

  ‘Far and far away,’ said the dainty little maiden,

  ‘All among the meadows, the clover and the clematis,

  Daisies and kingcups and honeysuckle-flowers.’

  II.

  Minnie and Winnie.

  MINNIE and Winnie

  Slept in a shell.

  Sleep, little ladies!

  And they slept well.

  Pink was the shell within,

  Silver without;

  Sounds of the great sea

  Wander’d about.

  Sleep, little ladies!

  Wake not soon!

  Echo on echo

  Dies to the moon.

  Two bright stars

  Peep’d into the shell.

  ‘What are they dreaming of?

  Who can tell?’

  Started a green linnet

  Out of the croft;

  Wake, little ladies,

  The sun is aloft!

  Lucretius

  LUCILLA, wedded to Lucretius, found

  Her master cold; for when the morning flush

  Of passion and the first embrace had died

  Between them, tho’ he loved her none the less,

  Yet often when the woman heard his foot

  Return from pacings in the field, and ran

  To greet him with a kiss, the master took

  Small notice, or austerely, for — his mind

  Half buried in some weightier argument,

  Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise

  And long roll of the hexameter — he past

  To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls

  Left by the Teacher, whom he held divine.

  She brook’d it not; but wrathful, petulant

  Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch

  Who brew’d the philtre which had power, they said

  To lead an errant passion home again.

  And this, at times, she mingled with his drink,

  And this destroy’d him; for the wicked broth

  Confused the chemic labor of the blood,

  And tickling the brute brain within the man’s

  Made havoc among those tender cells, and check’d

  His power to shape: He loathed himself; and once

  After a tempest woke upon a morn

  That mock’d him with returning calm, and cried:

  ‘Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain

  Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderbolt —

  Methought I never saw so fierce a fork —

  Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show’d

  A riotous confluence of watercourses

  Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it,

  Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.

  ‘Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods, what dreams!

  For thrice I waken’d after dreams. Perchance

  We do but recollect the dreams that come

  Just ere the waking: terrible: for it seem’d

  A void was made in Nature; all her bonds

  Crack’d; and I saw the flaring atom-streams

  And torrents of her myriad universe,

  Ruining along the illimitable inane,

  Fly on to clash together again, and make

  Another and another frame of things

  For ever: that was mine, my dream, I knew it —

  Of and belonging to me, as the dog

  With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies

  His function of the woodland; but the next!

  I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed

  Came driving rainlike down again on earth,

  And where it dash’d the reddening meadow, sprang

  No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth,

  For these I thought my dream would show to me,

  But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art,

  Hired animalisms, vile as those that made

  The mulberry-faced Dictator’s orgies worse

  Than aught they fable of the quiet Gods.

  And hands they mixt, and yell’d and round me drove

  In narrowing circles till I yell’d again

  Half-suffocated, and sprang up, and saw —

  Was it the first beam of my latest day?

  ‘Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the

  The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword

  Now over and now under, now direct,

  Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed

  At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire,

  The fire that left a roofless Ilion,

  Shot out of them, and scorch’d me that I woke.

  ‘Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine,

  Because I would not one of thine own doves,

  Not ev’n a rose, were offered to thee? thine,

  Forgetful how my rich proœmion makes

  Thy glory fly along the Italian field,

  In lays that will outlast thy deity?

  ‘Deity? nay, thy worshippers. My tongue

  Trips, or I speak profanely. Which of these

  Angers thee most, or angers thee at all?

  Not if thou be’st of those who, far aloof

  From envy, hate and pity, and spite and scorn,

  Live the great life which all our greatest fain

  Would follow, centred in eternal calm.

  ‘Nay, if thou canst, O Goddess, like ourselves

  Touch, and be touch’d, then would I cry to thee

  To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms

  Round him, and keep him from the lust of blood

  That makes a steaming slaughter-house of Rome.

  ‘Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant not her

  Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see

  Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tem
pt

  The Trojan, while his neat-herds were abroad;

  Nor her that o’er her wounded hunter wept

  Her Deity false in human-amorous tears;

  Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter

  Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods,

  Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called

  Calliope to grace his golden verse —

  Ay, and this Kypris also — did I take

  That popular name of thine to shadow forth

  The all-generating powers and genial heat

  Of Nature, when she strikes thro’ the thick blood

  Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad

  Nosing the mother’s udder, and the bird

  Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers;

  Which things appear the work of mighty Gods.

  ‘The Gods! and if I go my work is left

  Unfinish’d — if I go. The Gods, who haunt

  The lucid interspace of world and world,

  Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind,

  Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,

  Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,

  Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar

  Their sacred everlasting calm! and such,

  Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm

  Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain

  Letting his own life go. The Gods, the Gods!

  If all be atoms, how then should the Gods

  Being atomic not be dissoluble,

  Not follow the great law? My master held

  That Gods there are, for all men so believe.

  I prest my footsteps into his, and meant

  Surely to lead my Memmius in a train

  Of flowery clauses onward to the proof

  That Gods there are, and deathless. Meant? I meant?

  I have forgotten what I meant: my mind

  Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed.

  ‘Look where another of our Gods, the Sun

  Apollo, Delius, or of older use

  All-seeing Hyperion — what you will —

  Has mounted yonder; since he never sware,

  Except his wrath were wreak’d on wretched man,

  That he would only shine among the dead

  Hereafter; tales! for never yet on earth

  Could dead flesh creep, or bits of roasting ox

  Moan round the spit — nor knows he what he sees;

  King of the East altho’ he seem, and girt

  With song and flame and fragrance, slowly lifts

  His golden feet on those empurpled stairs

  That climb into the windy halls of heaven:

  And here he glances on an eye new-born,

  And gets for greeting but a wail of pain;

  And here he stays upon a freezing orb

  That fain would gaze upon him to the last;

  And here upon a yellow eyelid fall’n