Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder, and wrong.

  VI.

  O we poor orphans of nothing — alone on that lonely shore —

  Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she bore!

  Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly fruit —

  Come from the brute, poor souls — no souls — and to die with the brute ——

  VII.

  Nay, but I am not claiming your pity: I know you of old —

  Small pity for those that have ranged from the narrow warmth of your fold,

  Where you bawl’d the dark side of your faith and a God of eternal rage,

  Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human heart, and the Age.

  VIII.

  But pity — the Pagan held it a vice — was in her and in me,

  Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be

  Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power,

  And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower;

  Pity for all that suffers on land or in air or the deep,

  And pity for our own selves till we long’d for eternal sleep.

  IX.

  ‘Lightly step over the sands! the waters — you hear them call!

  Life with its anguish, and horrors, and errors — away with it all!’

  And she laid her hand in my own — she was always loyal and sweet —

  Till the points of the foam in the dusk came playing about our feet.

  There was a strong sea-current would sweep us out to the main.

  ‘Ah God’ tho’ I felt as I spoke I was taking the name in vain —

  ‘Ah God’ and we turn’d to each other, we kiss’d, we embraced, she and I,

  Knowing the Love we were used to believe everlasting would die

  We had read their know-nothing books and we lean’d to the darker side —

  Ah God, should we find Him, perhaps, perhaps, if we died, if we died;

  We never had found Him on earth, this earth is a fatherless Hell —

  ‘Dear Love, for ever and ever, for ever and ever farewell,’

  Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began,

  Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man!

  X.

  But the blind wave cast me ashore, and you saved me, a valueless life.

  Not a grain of gratitude mine! You have parted the man from the wife.

  I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea;

  If a curse meant ought, I would curse you for not having let me be.

  XI.

  Visions of youth — for my brain was drunk with the water, it seems;

  I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant dreams,

  And the transient trouble of drowning — what was it when match’d with the pains

  Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro’ the veins?

  XII.

  Why should I live? one son had forged on his father and fled,

  And if I believed in a God, I would thank him, the other is dead,

  And there was a baby-girl, that had never look’d on the light

  Happiest she of us all, for she past from the night to the night.

  XIII.

  But the crime, if a crime, of her eldest-born, her glory, her boast,

  Struck hard at the tender heart of the mother, and broke it almost;

  Tho’, glory and shame dying out for ever in endless time,

  Does it matter so much whether crown’d for a virtue, or hang’d for a crime?

  XIV.

  And ruin’d by him, by him, I stood there, naked, amazed

  In a world of arrogant opulence, fear’d myself turning crazed,

  And I would not be mock’d in a madhouse! and she, the delicate wife,

  With a grief that could only be cured, if cured, by the surgeon’s knife, —

  XV.

  Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of pain,

  If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain,

  And the homeless planet at length will be wheel’d thro’ the silence of space,

  Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race,

  When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled

  From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead?

  XVI.

  Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O yes,

  For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,

  When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,

  And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon,

  Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn’d into blood,

  And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;

  For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter’d from hand to hand —

  We have knelt in your know-all chapel too looking over the sand.

  XVII.

  What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well?

  Infinite cruelty rather that made everlasting Hell,

  Made us, foreknew us, foredoom’d us, and does what he will with his own;

  Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan!

  XVIII.

  Hell? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told,

  The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn for his gold,

  And so there were Hell for ever! but were there a God as you say,

  His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish’d away.

  XIX.

  All yet — I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe,

  Of a God behind all — after all — the great God for aught that I know;

  But the God of Love and of Hell together — they cannot be thought,

  If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought!

  XX.

  Blasphemy! whose is the fault? is it mine? for why would you save

  A madman to vex you with wretched words, who is best in his grave?

  Blasphemy! ay, why not, being damn’d beyond hope of grace?

  O would I were yonder with her, and away from your faith and your face!

  Blasphemy! true! I have scared you pale with my scandalous talk,

  But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in the way that you walk.

  XXI.

  Hence! she is gone! can I stay? can I breathe divorced from the Past?

  You needs must have good lynx-eyes if I do not escape you at last.

  Our orthodox coroner doubtless will find it a felo-de-se,

  And the stake and the cross-road, fool, if you will, does it matter to me?

  The Ancient Sage

  A THOUSAND summers ere the time of Christ

  From out his ancient city came a Seer

  Whom one that loved, and honour’d him, and yet

  Was no disciple, richly garb’d, but worn

  From wasteful living, follow’d — in his hand

  A scroll of verse — till that old man before

  A cavern whence an affluent fountain pour’d

  From darkness into daylight, turn’d and spoke.

  This wealth of waters might but seem to draw

  From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,

  Yon summit half-a-league in air — and higher,

  The cloud that hides it — higher still, the heavens

  Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout

  The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.

  I am wearied of our city, son, and go

  To spend my one last year among the hills.

  What hast thou there? Some deathsong for the Ghouls

  To make their banquet relish? let me read.

  “How far thro’
all the bloom and brake

  That nightingale is heard!

  What power but the bird’s could make

  This music in the bird?

  How summer-bright are yonder skies,

  And earth as fair in lute!

  And yet what sign of aught that lies

  Behind the green and blue?

  But man to-day is fancy’s fool

  As man hath ever been.

  The nameless Power, or Powers, that rule

  Were never heard or seen.”

  If thou would’st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive

  Into the Temple-cave of thine own self,

  There, brooding by the central altar, thou

  May’st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice,

  By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise,

  As if thou knewest, tho’ thou canst not know;

  For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake

  That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there

  But never yet hath dipt into the abysm,

  The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within

  The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth,

  And in the million-millionth of a grain

  Which cleft and cleft again for evermore,

  And ever vanishing, never vanishes,

  To me, my son, more mystic than myself,

  Or even than the Nameless is to me.

  And when thou sendest thy free soul thro’ heaven,

  Nor understandest bound nor boundlessness,

  Thou seest the Nameless of the hundred names.

  And if the Nameless should withdraw from all

  Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world

  Might vanish like thy shadow in the dark.

  “And since — from when this earth began —

  The Nameless never came

  Among us, never spake with man,

  And never named the Name” —

  Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,

  Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,

  Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,

  Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,

  Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:

  Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no

  Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay my son,

  Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,

  Am not thyself in converse with thyself,

  For nothing worthy proving can be proven,

  Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,

  Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,

  And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!

  She reels not in the storm of warring words,

  She brightens at the clash of ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’

  She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,

  She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,

  She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud,

  She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,

  She hears the lark within the songless egg,

  She finds the fountain where they wail’d ‘Mirage’!

  “What Power? aught akin to Mind,

  The mind in me and you?

  Or power as of the Gods gone blind

  Who see not what they do?”

  But some in yonder city hold, my son,

  That none but Gods could build this house of ours,

  So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond

  All work of man, yet, like all work of man,

  A beauty with defect —— till That which knows,

  And is not known, but felt thro’ what we feel

  Within ourselves is highest, shall descend

  On this half-deed, and shape it at the last

  According to the Highest in the Highest.

  “What Power but the Years that make

  And break the vase of clay,

  And stir the sleeping earth, and wake

  The bloom that fades away?

  What rulers but the Days and Hours

  That cancel weal with woe,

  And wind the front of youth with flowers,

  And cap our age with snow?”

  The days and hours are ever glancing by,

  And seem to flicker past thro’ sun and shade,

  Or short, or long, as Pleasure leads, or Pain;

  But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour;

  Tho’ we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought,

  Break into ‘Thens’ and ‘Whens’ the Eternal Now

  This double seeming of the single world! —

  My words are like the babblings in a dream

  Of nightmare, when the habblings break the dream.

  But thou be wise in this dream-world of ours,

  Nor take thy dial for thy deity,

  But make the passing shadow serve thy will.

  “The years that made the stripling wise

  Undo their work again,

  And leave him, blind of heart and eyes,

  The last and least of men;

  Who clings to earth, and once would dare

  Hell-heat or Arctic cold,

  And now one breath of cooler air

  Would loose him from his hold;

  His winter chills him to the root,

  He withers marrow and mind;

  The kernel of the shrivell’d fruit

  Is jutting thro’ the rind;

  The tiger spasms tear his chest,

  The palsy wags his head;

  The wife, the sons, who love him best

  Would fain that he were dead;

  The griefs by which he once was wrung

  Were never worth the while” —

  Who knows? or whether this earth-narrow life

  Be yet but yolk, and forming in the shell

  “The shaft of scorn that once had stung

  But wakes a dotard smile.”

  The placid gleams of sunset after storm!

  “The statesman’s brain that sway’d the past

  Is feebler than his knees;

  The passive sailor wrecks at last

  In ever-silent seas;

  The warrior hath forgot his arms,

  The Learned all his lore;

  The changing market frets or charms

  The merchant’s hope no more;

  The prophet’s beacon burn’d in vain,

  And now is lost in cloud;

  The plowman passes, bent with pain,

  To mix with what he plow’d;

  The poet whom his Age would quote

  As heir of endless fame —

  He knows not ev’n the book he wrote,

  Not even his own name.

  For man has overlived his day,

  And, darkening in the light,

  Scarce feels the senses break away

  To mix with ancient Night.”

  The shell must break before the bird can fly.

  “The years that when my Youth began

  Had set the lily and rose

  By all my ways where’er they ran,

  Have ended mortal foes;

  My rose of love for ever gone,

  My lily of truth and trust —

  They made her lily and rose in one,

  And changed her into dust.

  O rosetree planted in my grief,

  And growing, on her tomb,

  Her dust is greening in your leaf,

  Her blood is in your bloom.

  O slender lily waving there,

  And laughing back the light,

  In vain you tell me ‘Earth is fair’

  When all is dark as night.”

  My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves,

  So dark that men cry out against the Heavens.

  Who knows but that the darkness is in man?

  The doors of Night may be the gates of Light;

  For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then

  Suddenly heal’d, how would’st thou glory
in all

  The splendours and the voices of the world!

  And we, the poor earth’s dying race, and yet

  No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore

  Await the last and largest sense to make

  The phantom walls of this illusion fade,

  And show us that the world is wholly fair.

  “But vain the tears for darken’d years

  As laughter over wine,

  And vain the laughter as the tears,

  O brother, mine or thine,

  For all that laugh, and all that weep

  And all that breathe are one

  Slight ripple on the boundless deep

  That moves, and all is gone.”

  But that one ripple on the boundless deep

  Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself

  For ever changing form, but evermore

  One with the boundless motion of the deep.

  “Yet wine and laughter friends! and set

  The lamps alight, and call

  For golden music, and forget

  The darkness of the pall.”

  If utter darkness closed the day, my son ——

  But earth’s dark forehead flings athwart the heavens

  Her shadow crown’d with stars — and yonder — out

  To northward — some that never set, but pass

  From sight and night to lose themselves in day.

  I hate the black negation of the bier,

  And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves

  And higher, having climb’d one step beyond

  Our village miseries, might be borne in white

  To burial or to burning, hymn’d from hence

  With songs in praise of death, and crown’d with flowers!

  “O worms and maggots of to-day

  Without their hope of wings!”

  But louder than thy rhyme the silent Word

  Of that world-prophet in the heart of man.

  “Tho’ some have gleams or so they say

  Of more than mortal things.”

  To-day? but what of yesterday? for oft

  On me, when boy, there came what then I call’d,

  Who knew no books and no philosophies,

  In my boy-phrase ‘The Passion of the Past.’

  The first gray streak of earliest summer-dawn,

  The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom,

  As if the late and early were but one —

  A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower

  Had murmurs ‘Lost and gone and lost and gone!’

  A breath, a whisper — some divine farewell —

  Desolate sweetness — far and far away —

  What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy?

  I know not and I speak of what has been.

  And more, my son! for more than once when I

  Sat all alone, revolving in myself

  The word that is the symbol of myself,