Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  And drown’d in yonder living blue

  The lark becomes a sightless song.

  Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,

  The flocks are whiter down the vale,

  And milkier every milky sail

  On winding stream or distant sea;

  Where now the seamew pipes, or dives

  In yonder greening gleam, and fly

  The happy birds, that change their sky

  To build and brood; that live their lives

  From land to land; and in my breast

  Spring wakens too; and my regret

  Becomes an April violet,

  And buds and blossoms like the rest.

  CXVI

  Is it, then, regret for buried time

  That keenlier in sweet April wakes,

  And meets the year, and gives and takes

  The colours of the crescent prime?

  Not all: the songs, the stirring air,

  The life re-orient out of dust

  Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust

  In that which made the world so fair.

  Not all regret: the face will shine

  Upon me, while I muse alone;

  And that dear voice, I once have known,

  Still speak to me of me and mine:

  Yet less of sorrow lives in me

  For days of happy commune dead;

  Less yearning for the friendship fled,

  Than some strong bond which is to be.

  CXVII

  O days and hours, your work is this

  To hold me from my proper place,

  A little while from his embrace,

  For fuller gain of after bliss:

  That out of distance might ensue

  Desire of nearness doubly sweet;

  And unto meeting when we meet,

  Delight a hundredfold accrue,

  For every grain of sand that runs,

  And every span of shade that steals,

  And every kiss of toothed wheels,

  And all the courses of the suns.

  CXVIII

  Contemplate all this work of Time,

  The giant labouring in his youth;

  Nor dream of human love and truth,

  As dying Nature’s earth and lime;

  But trust that those we call the dead

  Are breathers of an ampler day

  For ever nobler ends. They say,

  The solid earth whereon we tread

  In tracts of fluent heat began,

  And grew to seeming-random forms,

  The seeming prey of cyclic storms,

  Till at the last arose the man;

  Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,

  The herald of a higher race,

  And of himself in higher place,

  If so he type this work of time

  Within himself, from more to more;

  Or, crown’d with attributes of woe

  Like glories, move his course, and show

  That life is not as idle ore,

  But iron dug from central gloom,

  And heated hot with burning fears,

  And dipt in baths of hissing tears,

  And batter’d with the shocks of doom

  To shape and use. Arise and fly

  The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;

  Move upward, working out the beast,

  And let the ape and tiger die.

  CXIX

  Doors, where my heart was used to beat

  So quickly, not as one that weeps

  I come once more; the city sleeps;

  I smell the meadow in the street;

  I hear a chirp of birds; I see

  Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn

  A light-blue lane of early dawn,

  And think of early days and thee,

  And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,

  And bright the friendship of thine eye;

  And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh

  I take the pressure of thine hand.

  CXX

  I trust I have not wasted breath:

  I think we are not wholly brain,

  Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,

  Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;

  Not only cunning casts in clay:

  Let Science prove we are, and then

  What matters Science unto men,

  At least to me? I would not stay.

  Let him, the wiser man who springs

  Hereafter, up from childhood shape

  His action like the greater ape,

  But I was born to other things.

  CXXI

  Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun

  And ready, thou, to die with him,

  Thou watchest all things ever dim

  And dimmer, and a glory done.

  The team is loosen’d from the wain,

  The boat is drawn upon the shore;

  Thou listenest to the closing door,

  And life is darken’d in the brain.

  Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,

  By thee the world’s great work is heard

  Beginning, and the wakeful bird;

  Behind thee comes the greater light.

  The market boat is on the stream,

  And voices hail it from the brink;

  Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,

  And see’st the moving of the team.

  Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name

  For what is one, the first, the last,

  Thou, like my present and my past,

  Thy place is changed; thou art the same.

  CXXII

  Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,

  While I rose up against my doom,

  And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,

  To bare the eternal Heavens again,

  To feel once more, in placid awe,

  The strong imagination roll

  A sphere of stars about my soul,

  In all her motion one with law?

  If thou wert with me, and the grave

  Divide us not, be with me now,

  And enter in at breast and brow,

  Till all my blood, a fuller wave,

  Be quicken’d with a livelier breath,

  And like an inconsiderate boy,

  As in the former flash of joy,

  I slip the thoughts of life and death;

  And all the breeze of Fancy blows,

  And every dew-drop paints a bow,

  The wizard lightnings deeply glow,

  And every thought breaks out a rose.

  CXXIII

  There rolls the deep where grew the tree.

  O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

  There where the long street roars, hath been

  The stillness of the central sea.

  The hills are shadows, and they flow

  From form to form, and nothing stands;

  They melt like mist, the solid lands,

  Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

  But in my spirit will I dwell,

  And dream my dream, and hold it true;

  For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu,

  I cannot think the thing farewell.

  CXXIV

  That which we dare invoke to bless;

  Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;

  He, They, One, All; within, without;

  The Power in darkness whom we guess, —

  I found Him not in world or sun,

  Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye,

  Nor thro’ the questions men may try,

  The petty cobwebs we have spun.

  If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,

  I heard a voice ‘believe no more,’

  And heard an ever-breaking shore

  That tumbled in the Godless deep,

  A warmth within the breast would melt

  The freezing reason’s colder part,

  And like a man in wrath the heart

 
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’

  No, like a child in doubt and fear:

  But that blind clamour made me wise;

  Then was I as a child that cries,

  But, crying, knows his father near;

  And what I am beheld again

  What is, and no man understands;

  And out of darkness came the hands

  That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.

  CXXV

  Whatever I have said or sung,

  Some bitter notes my harp would give,

  Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live

  A contradiction on the tongue,

  Yet Hope had never lost her youth,

  She did but look through dimmer eyes;

  Or Love but play’d with gracious lies,

  Because he felt so fix’d in truth;

  And if the song were full of care,

  He breathed the spirit of the song;

  And if the words were sweet and strong

  He set his royal signet there;

  Abiding with me till I sail

  To seek thee on the mystic deeps,

  And this electric force, that keeps

  A thousand pulses dancing, fail.

  CXXVI

  Love is and was my Lord and King,

  And in his presence I attend

  To hear the tidings of my friend,

  Which every hour his couriers bring.

  Love is and was my King and Lord,

  And will be, tho’ as yet I keep

  Within his court on earth, and sleep

  Encompass’d by his faithful guard,

  And hear at times a sentinel

  Who moves about from place to place,

  And whispers to the worlds of space,

  In the deep night, that all is well.

  CXXVII

  And all is well, tho’ faith and form

  Be sunder’d in the night of fear;

  Well roars the storm to those that hear

  A deeper voice across the storm,

  Proclaiming social truth shall spread,

  And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again

  The red fool-fury of the Seine

  Should pile her barricades with dead.

  But ill for him that wears a crown,

  And him, the lazar, in his rags:

  They tremble, the sustaining crags;

  The spires of ice are toppled down,

  And molten up, and roar in flood;

  The fortress crashes from on high,

  The brute earth lightens to the sky,

  And the great Æon sinks in blood,

  And compass’d by the fires of Hell;

  While thou, dear spirit, happy star,

  O’erlook’st the tumult from afar,

  And smilest, knowing all is well.

  CXXVIII

  The love that rose on stronger wings,

  Unpalsied when he met with Death,

  Is comrade of the lesser faith

  That sees the course of human things.

  No doubt vast eddies in the flood

  Of onward time shall yet be made,

  And throned races may degrade;

  Yet, O ye mysteries of good,

  Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,

  If all your office had to do

  With old results that look like new;

  If this were all your mission here,

  To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,

  To fool the crowd with glorious lies,

  To cleave a creed in sects and cries,

  To change the bearing of a word,

  To shift an arbitrary power,

  To cramp the student at his desk,

  To make old bareness picturesque

  And tuft with grass a feudal tower;

  Why then my scorn might well descend

  On you and yours. I see in part

  That all, as in some piece of art,

  Is toil cöoperant to an end.

  CXXIX

  Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,

  So far, so near in woe and weal,

  O loved the most, when most I feel

  There is a lower and a higher;

  Known and unknown, human, divine;

  Sweet human hand and lips and eye;

  Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,

  Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;

  Strange friend, past, present, and to be;

  Loved deeplier, darklier understood;

  Behold, I dream a dream of good,

  And mingle all the world with thee.

  CXXX

  Thy voice is on the rolling air;

  I hear thee where the waters run;

  Thou standest in the rising sun,

  And in the setting thou art fair.

  What art thou then? I cannot guess;

  But tho’ I seem in star and flower

  To feel thee some diffusive power,

  I do not therefore love thee less.

  My love involves the love before;

  My love is vaster passion now;

  Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,

  I seem to love thee more and more.

  Far off thou art, but ever nigh;

  I have thee still, and I rejoice;

  I prosper, circled with thy voice;

  I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.

  CXXXI

  O living will that shalt endure

  When all that seems shall suffer shock,

  Rise in the spiritual rock,

  Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,

  That we may lift from out of dust

  A voice as unto him that hears,

  A cry above the conquer’d years

  To one that with us works, and trust,

  With faith that comes of self-control,

  The truths that never can be proved

  Until we close with all we loved,

  And all we flow from, soul in soul.

  In Memoriam A. H. H.: Epilogue

  O true and tried, so well and long,

  Demand not thou a marriage lay;

  In that it is thy marriage day

  Is music more than any song.

  Nor have I felt so much of bliss

  Since first he told me that he loved

  A daughter of our house, nor proved

  Since that dark day a day like this;

  Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er

  Some thrice three years: they went and came,

  Remade the blood and changed the frame,

  And yet is love not less, but more;

  No longer caring to embalm

  In dying songs a dead regret,

  But like a statue solid-set,

  And moulded in colossal calm.

  Regret is dead, but love is more

  Than in the summers that are flown,

  For I myself with these have grown

  To something greater than before;

  Which makes appear the songs I made

  As echoes out of weaker times,

  As half but idle brawling rhymes,

  The sport of random sun and shade.

  But where is she, the bridal flower,

  That must be made a wife ere noon?

  She enters, glowing like the moon

  Of Eden on its bridal bower:

  On me she bends her blissful eyes

  And then on thee; they meet thy look

  And brighten like the star that shook

  Betwixt the palms of paradise.

  O when her life was yet in bud,

  He too foretold the perfect rose.

  For thee she grew, for thee she grows

  For ever, and as fair as good.

  And thou art worthy; full of power;

  As gentle; liberal-minded, great,

  Consistent; wearing all that weight

  Of learning lightly like a flower.

  But now set out: the noon is near,

  And I must give away the b
ride;

  She fears not, or with thee beside

  And me behind her, will not fear.

  For I that danced her on my knee,

  That watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,

  That shielded all her life from harm

  At last must part with her to thee;

  Now waiting to be made a wife,

  Her feet, my darling, on the dead

  Their pensive tablets round her head,

  And the most living words of life

  Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,

  The ‘wilt thou’ answer’d, and again

  The ‘wilt thou’ ask’d, till out of twain

  Her sweet ‘I will’ has made you one.

  Now sign your names, which shall be read,

  Mute symbols of a joyful morn,

  By village eyes as yet unborn;

  The names are sign’d, and overhead

  Begins the clash and clang that tells

  The joy to every wandering breeze;

  The blind wall rocks, and on the trees

  The dead leaf trembles to the bells.

  O happy hour, and happier hours

  Await them. Many a merry face

  Salutes them — maidens of the place,

  That pelt us in the porch with flowers.

  O happy hour, behold the bride

  With him to whom her hand I gave.

  They leave the porch, they pass the grave

  That has to-day its sunny side.

  To-day the grave is bright for me,

  For them the light of life increased,

  Who stay to share the morning feast,

  Who rest to-night beside the sea.

  Let all my genial spirits advance

  To meet and greet a whiter sun;

  My drooping memory will not shun

  The foaming grape of eastern France.

  It circles round, and fancy plays,

  And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,

  As drinking health to bride and groom

  We wish them store of happy days.

  Nor count me all to blame if I

  Conjecture of a stiller guest,

  Perchance, perchance, among the rest,

  And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.

  But they must go, the time draws on,

  And those white-favour’d horses wait;

  They rise, but linger; it is late;

  Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.

  A shade falls on us like the dark

  From little cloudlets on the grass,

  But sweeps away as out we pass

  To range the woods, to roam the park,

  Discussing how their courtship grew,

  And talk of others that are wed,

  And how she look’d, and what he said,

  And back we come at fall of dew.

  Again the feast, the speech, the glee,

  The shade of passing thought, the wealth

  Of words and wit, the double health,

  The crowning cup, the three-times-three,

  And last the dance; — till I retire:

  Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,

  And high in heaven the streaming cloud,