Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

A lifelong tract of time reveal’d;

  The fruitful hours of still increase;

  Days order’d in a wealthy peace,

  And those five years its richest field.

  O Love, thy province were not large,

  A bounded field, nor stretching far;

  Look also, Love, a brooding star,

  A rosy warmth from marge to marge.

  XLVII

  That each, who seems a separate whole,

  Should move his rounds, and fusing all

  The skirts of self again, should fall

  Remerging in the general Soul,

  Is faith as vague as all unsweet:

  Eternal form shall still divide

  The eternal soul from all beside;

  And I shall know him when we meet:

  And we shall sit at endless feast,

  Enjoying each the other’s good:

  What vaster dream can hit the mood

  Of Love on earth? He seeks at least

  Upon the last and sharpest height,

  Before the spirits fade away,

  Some landing-place, to clasp and say,

  ‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’

  XLVIII

  If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,

  Were taken to be such as closed

  Grave doubts and answers here proposed,

  Then these were such as men might scorn:

  Her care is not to part and prove;

  She takes, when harsher moods remit,

  What slender shade of doubt may flit,

  And makes it vassal unto love:

  And hence, indeed, she sports with words,

  But better serves a wholesome law,

  And holds it sin and shame to draw

  The deepest measure from the chords:

  Nor dare she trust a larger lay,

  But rather loosens from the lip

  Short swallow-flights of song, that dip

  Their wings in tears, and skim away.

  XLIX

  From art, from nature, from the schools,

  Let random influences glance,

  Like light in many a shiver’d lance

  That breaks about the dappled pools:

  The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,

  The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe,

  The slightest air of song shall breathe

  To make the sullen surface crisp.

  And look thy look, and go thy way,

  But blame not thou the winds that make

  The seeming-wanton ripple break,

  The tender-pencil’d shadow play.

  Beneath all fancied hopes and fears

  Ay me, the sorrow deepens down.

  Whose muffled motions blindly drown

  The bases of my life in tears.

  L

  Be near me when my light is low,

  When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick

  And tingle; and the heart is sick,

  And all the wheels of Being slow.

  Be near me when the sensuous frame

  Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;

  And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

  And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

  Be near me when my faith is dry,

  And men the flies of latter spring,

  That lay their eggs, and sting and sing

  And weave their petty cells and die.

  Be near me when I fade away,

  To point the term of human strife,

  And on the low dark verge of life

  The twilight of eternal day.

  LI

  Do we indeed desire the dead

  Should still be near us at our side?

  Is there no baseness we would hide?

  No inner vileness that we dread?

  Shall he for whose applause I strove,

  I had such reverence for his blame,

  See with clear eye some hidden shame

  And I be lessen’d in his love?

  I wrong the grave with fears untrue:

  Shall love be blamed for want of faith?

  There must be wisdom with great Death:

  The dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.

  Be near us when we climb or fall:

  Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours

  With larger other eyes than ours,

  To make allowance for us all.

  LII

  I cannot love thee as I ought,

  For love reflects the thing beloved;

  My words are only words, and moved

  Upon the topmost froth of thought.

  ‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’

  The Spirit of true love replied;

  ‘Thou canst not move me from thy side,

  Nor human frailty do me wrong.

  ‘What keeps a spirit wholly true

  To that ideal which he bears?

  What record? not the sinless years

  That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:

  ‘So fret not, like an idle girl,

  That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.

  Abide: thy wealth is gather’d in,

  When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’

  LIII

  How many a father have I seen,

  A sober man, among his boys,

  Whose youth was full of foolish noise,

  Who wears his manhood hale and green:

  And dare we to this fancy give,

  That had the wild oat not been sown,

  The soil, left barren, scarce had grown

  The grain by which a man may live?

  Or, if we held the doctrine sound

  For life outliving heats of youth,

  Yet who would preach it as a truth

  To those that eddy round and round?

  Hold thou the good: define it well:

  For fear divine Philosophy

  Should push beyond her mark, and be

  Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

  LIV

  Oh yet we trust that somehow good

  Will be the final goal of ill,

  To pangs of nature, sins of will,

  Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

  That nothing walks with aimless feet;

  That not one life shall be destroy’d,

  Or cast as rubbish to the void,

  When God hath made the pile complete;

  That not a worm is cloven in vain;

  That not a moth with vain desire

  Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,

  Or but subserves another’s gain.

  Behold, we know not anything;

  I can but trust that good shall fall

  At last — far off — at last, to all,

  And every winter change to spring.

  So runs my dream: but what am I?

  An infant crying in the night:

  An infant crying for the light:

  And with no language but a cry.

  LV

  The wish, that of the living whole

  No life may fail beyond the grave,

  Derives it not from what we have

  The likest God within the soul?

  Are God and Nature then at strife,

  That Nature lends such evil dreams?

  So careful of the type she seems,

  So careless of the single life;

  That I, considering everywhere

  Her secret meaning in her deeds,

  And finding that of fifty seeds

  She often brings but one to bear,

  I falter where I firmly trod,

  And falling with my weight of cares

  Upon the great world’s altar-stairs

  That slope thro’ darkness up to God,

  I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

  And gather dust and chaff, and call

  To what I feel is Lord of all,

  And faintly trust the larger hope.

  LVI

  ‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
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  From scarped cliff and quarried stone

  She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:

  I care for nothing, all shall go.

  ‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:

  I bring to life, I bring to death:

  The spirit does but mean the breath:

  I know no more.’ And he, shall he,

  Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,

  Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

  Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,

  Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

  Who trusted God was love indeed

  And love Creation’s final law?

  Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

  With ravine, shriek’d against his creed?

  Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,

  Who battled for the True, the Just,

  Be blown about the desert dust,

  Or seal’d within the iron hills?

  No more? A monster then, a dream,

  A discord. Dragons of the prime,

  That tare each other in their slime,

  Were mellow music match’d with him.

  O life as futile, then, as frail!

  O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

  What hope of answer, or redress?

  Behind the veil, behind the veil.

  LVII

  Peace; come away: the song of woe

  Is after all an earthly song:

  Peace; come away: we do him wrong

  To sing so wildly: let us go.

  Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;

  But half my life I leave behind:

  Methinks my friend is richly shrined;

  But I shall pass; my work will fail.

  Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,

  One set slow bell will seem to toll

  The passing of the sweetest soul

  That ever look’d with human eyes.

  I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,

  Eternal greetings to the dead;

  And ‘Ave, Ave, Ave,’ said,

  ‘Adieu, adieu,’ for evermore.

  LVIII

  In those sad words I took farewell:

  Like echoes in sepulchral halls,

  As drop by drop the water falls

  In vaults and catacombs, they fell;

  And, falling, idly broke the peace

  Of hearts that beat from day to day,

  Half-conscious of their dying clay,

  And those cold crypts where they shall cease.

  The high Muse answer’d: ‘Wherefore grieve

  Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?

  Abide a little longer here,

  And thou shalt take a nobler leave.’

  LIX

  O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me

  No casual mistress, but a wife,

  My bosom-friend and half of life;

  As I confess it needs must be;

  O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,

  Be sometimes lovely like a bride,

  And put thy harsher moods aside,

  If thou wilt have me wise and good.

  My centred passion cannot move,

  Nor will it lessen from to-day;

  But I’ll have leave at times to play

  As with the creature of my love;

  And set thee forth, for thou art mine,

  With so much hope for years to come,

  That, howsoe’er I know thee, some

  Could hardly tell what name were thine.

  LX

  He past; a soul of nobler tone:

  My spirit loved and loves him yet,

  Like some poor girl whose heart is set

  On one whose rank exceeds her own.

  He mixing with his proper sphere,

  She finds the baseness of her lot,

  Half jealous of she knows not what,

  And envying all that meet him there.

  The little village looks forlorn;

  She sighs amid her narrow days,

  Moving about the household ways,

  In that dark house where she was born.

  The foolish neighbors come and go,

  And tease her till the day draws by:

  At night she weeps, ‘How vain am I!’

  How should he love a thing so low?’

  LXI

  If, in thy second state sublime,

  Thy ransom’d reason change replies

  With all the circle of the wise,

  The perfect flower of human time;

  And if thou cast thine eyes below,

  How dimly character’d and slight,

  How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,

  How blanch’d with darkness must I grow!

  Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,

  Where thy first form was made a man;

  I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can

  The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.

  LXII

  Tho’ if an eye that’s downward cast

  Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,

  Then be my love an idle tale,

  And fading legend of the past;

  And thou, as one that once declined,

  When he was little more than boy,

  On some unworthy heart with joy,

  But lives to wed an equal mind;

  And breathes a novel world, the while

  His other passion wholly dies,

  Or in the light of deeper eyes

  Is matter for a flying smile.

  LXIII

  Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,

  And love in which my hound has part,

  Can hang no weight upon my heart

  In its assumptions up to heaven;

  And I am so much more than these,

  As thou, perchance, art more than I,

  And yet I spare them sympathy,

  And I would set their pains at ease.

  So mayst thou watch me where I weep,

  As, unto vaster motions bound,

  The circuits of thine orbit round

  A higher height, a deeper deep.

  LXIV

  Dost thou look back on what hath been,

  As some divinely gifted man,

  Whose life in low estate began

  And on a simple village green;

  Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,

  And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

  And breasts the blows of circumstance,

  And grapples with his evil star;

  Who makes by force his merit known

  And lives to clutch the golden keys,

  To mould a mighty state’s decrees,

  And shape the whisper of the throne;

  And moving up from high to higher,

  Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope

  The pillar of a people’s hope,

  The centre of a world’s desire;

  Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,

  When all his active powers are still,

  A distant dearness in the hill,

  A secret sweetness in the stream,

  The limit of his narrower fate,

  While yet beside its vocal springs

  He play’d at counsellors and kings,

  With one that was his earliest mate;

  Who ploughs with pain his native lea

  And reaps the labour of his hands,

  Or in the furrow musing stands;

  ‘Does my old friend remember me?’

  LXV

  Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;

  I lull a fancy trouble-tost

  With ‘Love’s too precious to be lost,

  A little grain shall not be spilt.’

  And in that solace can I sing,

  Till out of painful phases wrought

  There flutters up a happy thought,

  Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:

  Since we deserved the name of friends,

  And thine effect so lives in me,

 
A part of mine may live in thee

  And move thee on to noble ends.

  LXVI

  You thought my heart too far diseased;

  You wonder when my fancies play

  To find me gay among the gay,

  Like one with any trifle pleased.

  The shade by which my life was crost,

  Which makes a desert in the mind,

  Has made me kindly with my kind,

  And like to him whose sight is lost;

  Whose feet are guided thro’ the land,

  Whose jest among his friends is free,

  Who takes the children on his knee,

  And winds their curls about his hand:

  He plays with threads, he beats his chair

  For pastime, dreaming of the sky;

  His inner day can never die,

  His night of loss is always there.

  LXVII

  When on my bed the moonlight falls,

  I know that in thy place of rest

  By that broad water of the west,

  There comes a glory on the walls;

  Thy marble bright in dark appears,

  As slowly steals a silver flame

  Along the letters of thy name,

  And o’er the number of thy years.

  The mystic glory swims away;

  From off my bed the moonlight dies;

  And closing eaves of wearied eyes

  I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray;

  And then I know the mist is drawn

  A lucid veil from coast to coast,

  And in the dark church like a ghost

  Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.

  LXVIII

  When in the down I sink my head,

  Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;

  Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,

  Nor can I dream of thee as dead:

  I walk as ere I walk’d forlorn,

  When all our path was fresh with dew,

  And all the bugle breezes blew

  Reveillée to the breaking morn.

  But what is this? I turn about,

  I find a trouble in thine eye,

  Which makes me sad I know not why,

  Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:

  But ere the lark hath left the lea

  I wake, and I discern the truth;

  It is the trouble of my youth

  That foolish sleep transfers to thee.

  LXIX

  I dream’d there would be Spring no more,

  That Nature’s ancient power was lost:

  The streets were black with smoke and frost,

  They chatter’d trifles at the door:

  I wander’d from the noisy town,

  I found a wood with thorny boughs:

  I took the thorns to bind my brows,

  I wore them like a civic crown:

  I met with scoffs, I met with scorns

  From youth and babe and hoary hairs:

  They call’d me in the public squares

  The fool that wears a crown of thorns:

  They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:

  I found an angel of the night;

  The voice was low, the look was bright;