Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  The hand that played the patron with her curls.

  And one said smiling ‘Pretty were the sight

  If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt

  With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,

  And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.

  I think they should not wear our rusty gowns,

  But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph

  Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear,

  If there were many Lilias in the brood,

  However deep you might embower the nest,

  Some boy would spy it.’

  At this upon the sward

  She tapt her tiny silken-sandaled foot:

  ‘That’s your light way; but I would make it death

  For any male thing but to peep at us.’

  Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed;

  A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,

  And sweet as English air could make her, she:

  But Walter hailed a score of names upon her,

  And ‘petty Ogress’, and ‘ungrateful Puss’,

  And swore he longed at college, only longed,

  All else was well, for she-society.

  They boated and they cricketed; they talked

  At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics;

  They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans;

  They rode; they betted; made a hundred friends,

  And caught the blossom of the flying terms,

  But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place,

  The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke,

  Part banter, part affection.

  ‘True,’ she said,

  ‘We doubt not that. O yes, you missed us much.

  I’ll stake my ruby ring upon it you did.’

  She held it out; and as a parrot turns

  Up through gilt wires a crafty loving eye,

  And takes a lady’s finger with all care,

  And bites it for true heart and not for harm,

  So he with Lilia’s. Daintily she shrieked

  And wrung it. ‘Doubt my word again!’ he said.

  ‘Come, listen! here is proof that you were missed:

  We seven stayed at Christmas up to read;

  And there we took one tutor as to read:

  The hard-grained Muses of the cube and square

  Were out of season: never man, I think,

  So mouldered in a sinecure as he:

  For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet,

  And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms,

  We did but talk you over, pledge you all

  In wassail; often, like as many girls —

  Sick for the hollies and the yews of home —

  As many little trifling Lilias — played

  Charades and riddles as at Christmas here,

  And what’s my thought and when and where and how,

  As here at Christmas.’

  She remembered that:

  A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more

  Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest.

  But these — what kind of tales did men tell men,

  She wondered, by themselves?

  A half-disdain

  Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips:

  And Walter nodded at me; ‘He began,

  The rest would follow, each in turn; and so

  We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind?

  Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms,

  Seven-headed monsters only made to kill

  Time by the fire in winter.’

  ‘Kill him now,

  The tyrant! kill him in the summer too,’

  Said Lilia; ‘Why not now?’ the maiden Aunt.

  ‘Why not a summer’s as a winter’s tale?

  A tale for summer as befits the time,

  And something it should be to suit the place,

  Heroic, for a hero lies beneath,

  Grave, solemn!’

  Walter warped his mouth at this

  To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed

  And Lilia woke with sudden-thrilling mirth

  An echo like a ghostly woodpecker,

  Hid in the ruins; till the maiden Aunt

  (A little sense of wrong had touched her face

  With colour) turned to me with ‘As you will;

  Heroic if you will, or what you will,

  Or be yourself you hero if you will.’

  ‘Take Lilia, then, for heroine’ clamoured he,

  ‘And make her some great Princess, six feet high,

  Grand, epic, homicidal; and be you

  The Prince to win her!’

  ‘Then follow me, the Prince,’

  I answered, ‘each be hero in his turn!

  Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. —

  Heroic seems our Princess as required —

  But something made to suit with Time and place,

  A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,

  A talk of college and of ladies’ rights,

  A feudal knight in silken masquerade,

  And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments

  For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all —

  This were a medley! we should have him back

  Who told the “Winter’s tale” to do it for us.

  No matter: we will say whatever comes.

  And let the ladies sing us, if they will,

  From time to time, some ballad or a song

  To give us breathing-space.’

  So I began,

  And the rest followed: and the women sang

  Between the rougher voices of the men,

  Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:

  And here I give the story and the songs.

  Princess: I

  A prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face,

  Of temper amorous, as the first of May,

  With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl,

  For on my cradle shone the Northern star.

  There lived an ancient legend in our house.

  Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt

  Because he cast no shadow, had foretold,

  Dying, that none of all our blood should know

  The shadow from the substance, and that one

  Should come to fight with shadows and to fall.

  For so, my mother said, the story ran.

  And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less,

  An old and strange affection of the house.

  Myself too had weird seizures, Heaven knows what:

  On a sudden in the midst of men and day,

  And while I walked and talked as heretofore,

  I seemed to move among a world of ghosts,

  And feel myself the shadow of a dream.

  Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane,

  And pawed his beard, and muttered ‘catalepsy’.

  My mother pitying made a thousand prayers;

  My mother was as mild as any saint,

  Half-canonized by all that looked on her,

  So gracious was her tact and tenderness:

  But my good father thought a king a king;

  He cared not for the affection of the house;

  He held his sceptre like a pedant’s wand

  To lash offence, and with long arms and hands

  Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass

  For judgment.

  Now it chanced that I had been,

  While life was yet in bud and blade, bethrothed

  To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me

  Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf

  At eight years old; and still from time to time

  Came murmurs of her beauty from the South,

  And of her brethren, youths of puissance;

  And still I wore her picture by my heart,

  And one dark tress; and all around them both

 
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen.

  But when the days drew nigh that I should wed,

  My father sent ambassadors with furs

  And jewels, gifts, to fetch her: these brought back

  A present, a great labour of the loom;

  And therewithal an answer vague as wind:

  Besides, they saw the king; he took the gifts;

  He said there was a compact; that was true:

  But then she had a will; was he to blame?

  And maiden fancies; loved to live alone

  Among her women; certain, would not wed.

  That morning in the presence room I stood

  With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends:

  The first, a gentleman of broken means

  (His father’s fault) but given to starts and bursts

  Of revel; and the last, my other heart,

  And almost my half-self, for still we moved

  Together, twinned as horse’s ear and eye.

  Now, while they spake, I saw my father’s face

  Grow long and troubled like a rising moon,

  Inflamed with wrath: he started on his feet,

  Tore the king’s letter, snowed it down, and rent

  The wonder of the loom through warp and woof

  From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware

  That he would send a hundred thousand men,

  And bring her in a whirlwind: then he chewed

  The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen,

  Communing with his captains of the war.

  At last I spoke. ‘My father, let me go.

  It cannot be but some gross error lies

  In this report, this answer of a king,

  Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable:

  Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen,

  Whate’er my grief to find her less than fame,

  May rue the bargain made.’ And Florian said:

  ‘I have a sister at the foreign court,

  Who moves about the Princess; she, you know,

  Who wedded with a nobleman from thence:

  He, dying lately, left her, as I hear,

  The lady of three castles in that land:

  Through her this matter might be sifted clean.’

  And Cyril whispered: ‘Take me with you too.’

  Then laughing ‘what, if these weird seizures come

  Upon you in those lands, and no one near

  To point you out the shadow from the truth!

  Take me: I’ll serve you better in a strait;

  I grate on rusty hinges here:’ but ‘No!’

  Roared the rough king, ‘you shall not; we ourself

  Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead

  In iron gauntlets: break the council up.’

  But when the council broke, I rose and past

  Through the wild woods that hung about the town;

  Found a still place, and plucked her likeness out;

  Laid it on flowers, and watched it lying bathed

  In the green gleam of dewy-tasselled trees:

  What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?

  Proud looked the lips: but while I meditated

  A wind arose and rushed upon the South,

  And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks

  Of the wild woods together; and a Voice

  Went with it, ‘Follow, follow, thou shalt win.’

  Then, ere the silver sickle of that month

  Became her golden shield, I stole from court

  With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived,

  Cat-footed through the town and half in dread

  To hear my father’s clamour at our backs

  With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night;

  But all was quiet: from the bastioned walls

  Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,

  And flying reached the frontier: then we crost

  To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,

  And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,

  We gained the mother city thick with towers,

  And in the imperial palace found the king.

  His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice,

  But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind

  On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;

  A little dry old man, without a star,

  Not like a king: three days he feasted us,

  And on the fourth I spake of why we came,

  And my bethrothed. ‘You do us, Prince,’ he said,

  Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,

  ‘All honour. We remember love ourselves

  In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass

  Long summers back, a kind of ceremony —

  I think the year in which our olives failed.

  I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart,

  With my full heart: but there were widows here,

  Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;

  They fed her theories, in and out of place

  Maintaining that with equal husbandry

  The woman were an equal to the man.

  They harped on this; with this our banquets rang;

  Our dances broke and buzzed in knots of talk;

  Nothing but this; my very ears were hot

  To hear them: knowledge, so my daughter held,

  Was all in all: they had but been, she thought,

  As children; they must lose the child, assume

  The woman: then, Sir, awful odes she wrote,

  Too awful, sure, for what they treated of,

  But all she is and does is awful; odes

  About this losing of the child; and rhymes

  And dismal lyrics, prophesying change

  Beyond all reason: these the women sang;

  And they that know such things — I sought but peace;

  No critic I — would call them masterpieces:

  They mastered me. At last she begged a boon,

  A certain summer-palace which I have

  Hard by your father’s frontier: I said no,

  Yet being an easy man, gave it: and there,

  All wild to found an University

  For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more

  We know not, — only this: they see no men,

  Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins

  Her brethren, though they love her, look upon her

  As on a kind of paragon; and I

  (Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed

  Dispute betwixt myself and mine: but since

  (And I confess with right) you think me bound

  In some sort, I can give you letters to her;

  And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance

  Almost at naked nothing.’

  Thus the king;

  And I, though nettled that he seemed to slur

  With garrulous ease and oily courtesies

  Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets

  But chafing me on fire to find my bride)

  Went forth again with both my friends. We rode

  Many a long league back to the North. At last

  From hills, that looked across a land of hope,

  We dropt with evening on a rustic town

  Set in a gleaming river’s crescent-curve,

  Close at the boundary of the liberties;

  There, entered an old hostel, called mine host

  To council, plied him with his richest wines,

  And showed the late-writ letters of the king.

  He with a long low sibilation, stared

  As blank as death in marble; then exclaimed

  Averring it was clear against all rules

  For any man to go: but as his brain

  Began to mellow, ‘If the king,’ he said,

  ‘Had given us letters, was he bound to speak?

  The king would bear him out;’ and at the last —

  The
summer of the vine in all his veins —

  ‘No doubt that we might make it worth his while.

  She once had past that way; he heard her speak;

  She scared him; life! he never saw the like;

  She looked as grand as doomsday and as grave:

  And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there;

  He always made a point to post with mares;

  His daughter and his housemaid were the boys:

  The land, he understood, for miles about

  Was tilled by women; all the swine were sows,

  And all the dogs’ —

  But while he jested thus,

  A thought flashed through me which I clothed in act,

  Remembering how we three presented Maid

  Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,

  In masque or pageant at my father’s court.

  We sent mine host to purchase female gear;

  He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake

  The midriff of despair with laughter, holp

  To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes

  We rustled: him we gave a costly bribe

  To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,

  And boldly ventured on the liberties.

  We followed up the river as we rode,

  And rode till midnight when the college lights

  Began to glitter firefly-like in copse

  And linden alley: then we past an arch,

  Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings

  From four winged horses dark against the stars;

  And some inscription ran along the front,

  But deep in shadow: further on we gained

  A little street half garden and half house;

  But scarce could hear each other speak for noise

  Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling

  On silver anvils, and the splash and stir

  Of fountains spouted up and showering down

  In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:

  And all about us pealed the nightingale,

  Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare.

  There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign,

  By two sphere lamps blazoned like Heaven and Earth

  With constellation and with continent,

  Above an entry: riding in, we called;

  A plump-armed Ostleress and a stable wench

  Came running at the call, and helped us down.

  Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sailed,

  Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave

  Upon a pillared porch, the bases lost

  In laurel: her we asked of that and this,

  And who were tutors. ‘Lady Blanche’ she said,

  ‘And Lady Psyche.’ ‘Which was prettiest,

  Best-natured?’ ‘Lady Psyche.’ ‘Hers are we,’

  One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote,

  In such a hand as when a field of corn