And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o’er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge, under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
MAUD, AND OTHER POEMS
Published in 1855, this was Tennyson’s first collection after succeeding William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850. As well as the title poem, the collection is noted for containing The Charge of the Light Brigade, which had already been published in the Examiner a few months before.
Maud was inspired by Charlotte Rosa Baring, the younger daughter of William Baring and Frances Poulett-Thomson. The first part of the poem concerns the funeral of Maud’s father, conveying a sense of loss and sorrow; then Maud is the prevailing theme. At first the narrator is somewhat antagonistic towards Maud and is unsure if she is teasing him, he feels Maud is unfit to be a wife. Later the narrator falls passionately in love with Maud and this transforms the narrative into a pastoral, dwelling on her beauty. The poem is complicated by the shifting position of the narrator, mirroring perhaps the emotional instability of the poet. A variety of poetic metres and images also give the poem an unusual atmosphere. In Maud, Tennyson returns to the poetry of sensation, dwelling on a consciousness constituted of fragments of feeling.
The Charge of the Light Brigade relates events at the Battle of Balaclava, during the Crimean War. The narrator appears to praise the heroic actions of the Brigade, whilst mourning the futility of their charge and subsequent deaths. According to the poet’s grandson, Tennyson wrote the poem in only a few minutes after reading an account of the battle in The Times. As Poet Laureate he often wrote verses about public events and this particular poem became immediately popular, even reaching the troops in the Crimea, where it was distributed in pamphlet form at the behest of Jane, Lady Franklin.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Maud: Part I
Maud: Part II
Maud: Part III
The Brook
The Letters
The Daisy
To the Rev. F.D. Maurice
Will
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Charge of the Light Brigade by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr.
Maud: Part I
I.
I.
I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
The red-ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,
And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers ‘Death.’
II.
For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,
His who had given me life — O father! O God! was it well? —
Mangled, and flatten’d, and crush’d, and dinted into the ground:
There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.
III.
Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail’d,
And ever he mutter’d and madden’d, and ever wann’d with despair,
And out he walk’d when the wind like a broken worlding wail’d,
And the flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands drove thro’ the air.
IV.
I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr’d
By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail’d, by a whisper’d fright,
And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard
The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.
V.
Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all.
Not he: his honest fame should at least by me be maintained:
But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall,
Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d.
VI.
Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?
VII.
But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman’s ware or his word?
Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.
VIII.
Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age — why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.
IX.
Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,
When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex, like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
Peace in her vineyard — yes! — but a company forges the wine.
X.
And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian’s head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life,
XI.
And Sleep must lie down arm’d, for the villainous centre-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits
To pestle a poison’d poison behind his crimson lights.
XII.
When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children’s bones,
Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.
XIII.
For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating
yardwand, home. —
XIV.
What! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood?
Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die
Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood
On a horror of shatter’d limbs and a wretched swindler’s lie?
XV.
Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek,
Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave —
Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak
And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave.
XVI.
I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main.
Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here?
O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain,
Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear?
XVII.
Workmen up at the Hall! — they are coming back from abroad;
The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionaire:
I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud;
I play’d with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair.
XVIII.
Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes,
Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall,
Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes,
Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all, —
XIX.
What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse.
No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone.
Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
I will bury myself in myself, and the Devil may pipe to his own.
II.
Long have I sigh’d for a calm: God grant I may find it at last!
It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,
But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past,
Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been
For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour’s defect of the rose,
Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full,
Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose,
From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen.
III.
Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek,
Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown’d,
Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek,
Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound;
Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong
Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before
Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more,
But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,
Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar,
Now to the scream of a madden’d beach dragg’d down by the wave,
Walk’d in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found
The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.
IV.
I.
A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit — ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,
Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?
II.
Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small!
And yet bubbles o’er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite;
And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar;
And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall
And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light;
But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star!
III.
When have I bow’d to her father, the wrinkled head of the race?
I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow’d:
I bow’d to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor;
But the fire of a foolish pride flash’d over her beautiful face.
O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud;
Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.
IV.
I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal;
I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like
A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way:
For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear’d by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
V.
We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother’s shame;
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.
VI.
A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth,
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature’s crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man:
He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base?
VII.
The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl’d into folly and vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.
VIII.
For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.
Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about?
Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide.
Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail?
Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout?
I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide.
IX.
Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways,
Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,
Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;
From the long-neck’d geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,
Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.
X.
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers and all
the measureless ill.
Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife.
Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above;
Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will;
You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.
V.
I.
A voice by the cedar tree
In the meadow under the Hall!
She is singing an air that is known to me,
A passionate ballad gallant and gay,
A martial song like a trumpet’s call!
Singing alone in the morning of life,
In the happy morning of life and of May,
Singing of men that in battle array,
Ready in heart and ready in hand,
March with banner and bugle and fife
To the death, for their native land.
II.
Maud with her exquisite face,
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,
And feet like sunny gems on an English green,
Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,
And myself so languid and base.
III.
Silence, beautiful voice!
Be still, for you only trouble the mind
With a joy in which I cannot rejoice,
A glory I shall not find.
Still! I will hear you no more,
For your sweetness hardly leaves me a choice
But to move to the meadow and fall before
Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore,
Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind,
Not her, not her, but a voice.
VI.
I.
Morning arises stormy and pale,
No sun, but a wannish glare
In fold upon fold of hueless cloud,
And the budded peaks of the wood are bow’d
Caught and cuff’d by the gale:
I had fancied it would be fair.
II.
Whom but Maud should I meet
Last night, when the sunset burn’d
On the blossom’d gable-ends
At the head of the village street,
Whom but Maud should I meet?
And she touch’d my hand with a smile so sweet,
She made me divine amends
For a courtesy not return’d.
III.
And thus a delicate spark
Of glowing and growing light
Thro’ the livelong hours of the dark
Kept itself warm in the heart of my dreams,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 65