Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series
Page 47
December, 1870
ON THE HILL.
THE LIGHTS and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover’s eye!
Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her window pane,
When the winds are up in the morning?
Clouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that cannot be still,
All running on one way to the home of my love,
You are all running on, and I stand on the slope of the hill,
And the winds are up in the morning!
Follow, follow the chase!
And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on.
O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face?
And my heart is there before you are come, and gone,
When the winds are up in the morning!
Follow them down the slope
And I follow them down to the window-pane of my dear,
And it brightens and darkens and brightens like my hope,
And it darkens and brightens and darkens like my fear,
And the winds are up in the morning.
AT THE WINDOW.
Vine, vine and eglantine,
Clasp her window, trail and twine!
Rose, rose and clematis,
Trail and twine and clasp and kiss,
Kiss, kiss; and make her a bower
All of flowers, and drop me a flower,
Drop me a flower.
Vine, vine and eglantine,
Cannot a flower, a flower, be mine?
Rose, rose and clematis,
Drop me a flower, a flower, to kiss,
Kiss, kiss — and out of her bower
All of flowers, a flower, a flower,
Dropt, a flower.
GONE.
Gone!
Gone, till the end of the year,
Gone, and the light gone with her, and left me in shadow here!
Gone-flitted away,
Taken the stars from the night and the sun from the day!
Gone, and a cloud in my heart, and a storm in the air!
Flown to the east or the west, flitted I know not where!
Down in the south is a flash and a groan: she is there! she is there!
WINTER.
The frost is here,
And fuel is clear,
And woods are sear,
And fires burn clear,
And frost is here
And has bitten the heel of the going year.
Bite, frost, bite!
You roll up away from the light
The blue wood-louse, and the plump dormouse,
And the bees are still’d, and the flies are kill’d,
And you bite far into the heart of the house,
But not into mine.
Bite, frost, bite!
The woods are all the searer,
The fuel is all the dearer,
The fires are all the clearer,
My spring is all the nearer,
You have bitten into the heart of the earth,
But not into mine
SPRING.
Birds’ love and birds’ song
Flying here and there,
Birds’ song and birds’ love,
And you with gold for hair!
Birds’ song and birds’ love.
Passing with the weather,
Men’s song and men’s love,
To love once and for ever.
Men’s love and birds’ love,
And women’s love and men’s!
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens!
You the queen of the wrens —
We’ll be birds of a feather,
I’ll be King of the Queen of the wrens,
And all in a nest together.
THE LETTER.
Where is another sweet as my sweet,
Fine of the fine, and shy of the shy?
Fine little hands, fine little feet —
Dewy blue eye.
Shall I write to her? shall I go?
Ask her to marry me by and by?
Somebody said that she’d say no;
Somebody knows that she’ll say ay!
Ay or no, if ask’d to her face?
Ay or no, from shy of the shy?
Go, little letter, apace, apace,
Fly;
Fly to the light in the valley below —
Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye:
Somebody said that she’d say no;
Somebody knows that she’ll say ay!
NO ANSWER.
The mist and the rain, the mist and the rain!
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
And never a glimpse of her window pane!
And I may die but the grass will grow,
And the grass will grow when I am gone,
And the wet west wind and the world will go on.
Ay is the song of the wedded spheres,
No is trouble and cloud and storm.
Ay is life for a hundred years,
No will push me down to the worm,
And when I am there and dead and gone,
The wet west wind and the world will go on.
The wind and the wet, the wind and the wet!
Wet west wind how you blow, you blow!
And never a line from my lady yet!
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
Blow then, blow, and when I am gone,
The wet west wind and the world may go on.
NO ANSWER.
Winds are loud and you are dumb,
Take my love, for love will come,
Love will come but once a life.
Winds are loud and winds will pass!
Spring is here with leaf and grass:
Take my love and be my wife.
After-loves of maids and men
Are but dainties drest again:
Love me now, you’ll love me then:
Love can love but once a life,
THE ANSWER.
Two little hands that meet,
Claspt on her seal, my sweet!
Must I take you and break you,
Two little hands that meet?
I must take you, and break you,
And loving hands must part —
Take, take — break, break —
Break — you may break my heart.
Faint heart never won —
Break, break, and all’s done.
AY.
Be merry, all birds, to-day,
Be merry on earth as you never were merry before,
Be merry in heaven, O larks, and far away,
And merry for ever and ever, and one day more.
Why?
For it’s easy to find a rhyme.
Look, look, how he flits,
The fire-crown’d king of the wrens, from out of the pine!
Look how they tumble the blossom, the mad little tits!
‘Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!’ was ever a May so fine?
Why?
For it’s easy to find a rhyme.
O merry the linnet and dove,
And swallow and sparrow and throstle, and have your desire!
O merry my heart, you have gotten the wings of love,
And flit like the king of the wrens with a crown of fire.
Why?
For it’s ay ay, ay ay.
WHEN.
Sun comes, moon comes,
Time slips away.
Sun sets, moon sets,
Love, fix a day.
‘A year hence, a year hence.’
‘We shall both be gray.’
‘A month hence, a month hence.
‘Far, far away.’
‘A week hence, a week hence.’
‘Ah, the long delay.’
‘Wait a little, wait a little,
You shall fix a day.’
‘To-morrow, lov
e, to-morrow,
And that’s an age away.’
Blaze upon her window, sun,
And honour all the day.
MARRIAGE MORNING.
Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay’d to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!
Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning star.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart,
Into my heart and my blood!
Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY
This comic ballad appeared initially in 1847 and narrates the story of a heroic princess that forswears the world of men, founding a women’s university where men are forbidden to enter. The prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess’s hand. They lose and are wounded, but the women nurse the men back to health. Eventually the princess returns the prince’s love.
Tennyson planned the poem in the late 1830s, after discussing the idea with Emily Sellwood, whom he later married in 1850. It seems to have been a response to the founding of Queen’s College, London, Britain’s first college for women, in 1847, especially as two of Tennyson’s friends were part-time professors there. Tennyson is reported as saying in the 1840s, that “the two great social questions impending in England were ‘the education of the poor man before making him our master, and the higher education of women’.”
Emily Sarah Tennyson, Lady Tennyson (1813–1896) was a creative poet in her own right.
CONTENTS
Princess: Prologue
Princess: I
Princess: II
Princess: III
Princess: IV
Princess: V
Princess: VI
Princess: VII
Princess: Conclusion
The first edition
Princess: Prologue
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer’s day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son, — the son
A Walter too, — with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.
And me that morning Walter showed the house,
Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His own forefathers’ arms and armour hung.
And ‘this’ he said ‘was Hugh’s at Agincourt;
And that was old Sir Ralph’s at Ascalon:
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle
With all about him’ — which he brought, and I
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights,
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings
Who laid about them at their wills and died;
And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed
Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate,
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls.
‘O miracle of women,’ said the book,
‘O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier’s death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost —
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire —
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses’ heels,
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!’
So sang the gallant glorious chronicle;
And, I all rapt in this, ‘Come out,’ he said,
‘To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth
And sister Lilia with the rest.’ We went
(I kept the book and had my finger in it)
Down through the park: strange was the sight to me;
For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown
With happy faces and with holiday.
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:
The patient leaders of their Institute
Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone
And drew, from butts of water on the slope,
The fountain of the moment, playing, now
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls,
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball
Danced like a wisp: and somewhat lower down
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls
A dozen angry models jetted steam:
A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves
And dropt a fairy parachute and past:
And there through twenty posts of telegraph
They flashed a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light
And shadow, while the twangling violin
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.
Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Through one wide chasm of time and frost they gave
The park, the crowd, the house; but all within
The sward was trim as an
y garden lawn:
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth,
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends
From neighbour seats: and there was Ralph himself,
A broken statue propt against the wall,
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport,
Half child half woman as she was, had wound
A scarf of orange round the stony helm,
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk,
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook
Glow like a sunbeam: near his tomb a feast
Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests,
And there we joined them: then the maiden Aunt
Took this fair day for text, and from it preached
An universal culture for the crowd,
And all things great; but we, unworthier, told
Of college: he had climbed across the spikes,
And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor’s dogs; and one
Discussed his tutor, rough to common men,
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneered with sanctimonious theory.
But while they talked, above their heads I saw
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought
My book to mind: and opening this I read
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls,
And much I praised her nobleness, and ‘Where,’
Asked Walter, patting Lilia’s head (she lay
Beside him) ‘lives there such a woman now?’
Quick answered Lilia ‘There are thousands now
Such women, but convention beats them down:
It is but bringing up; no more than that:
You men have done it: how I hate you all!
Ah, were I something great! I wish I were
Some might poetess, I would shame you then,
That love to keep us children! O I wish
That I were some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college like a man’s,
And I would teach them all that men are taught;
We are twice as quick!’ And here she shook aside