Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  The man in space and time,

  So drew perchance a happier lot

  Than ours, who rhyme to-day.

  The fires that arch this dusky dot —

  Yon myriad-worlded way —

  The vast sun-clusters’ gather’d blaze,

  World-isles in lonely skies,

  Whole heavens within themselves, amaze

  Our brief humanities;

  And so does Earth; for Homer’s fame,

  Tho’ carved in harder stone —

  The falling drop will make his name

  As mortal as my own.

  IRENE.

  No!

  POET.

  Let it live then — ay, till when?

  Earth passes, all is lost

  In what they prophesy, our wise men,

  Sun-flame or sunless frost,

  And deed and song alike are swept

  Away, and all in vain

  As far as man can see, except

  The man himself remain;

  And tho’, in this lean age forlorn,

  Too many a voice may cry

  That man can have no after-morn,

  Not yet of those am I.

  The man remains, and whatsoe’er

  He wrought of good or brave

  Will mould him thro’ the cycle-year

  That dawns behind the grave.

  And here the Singer for his Art

  Not all in vain may plead

  ‘The song that nerves a nation’s heart

  Is in itself a deed.’

  To Virgil

  Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil’s Death.

  I.

  ROMAN VIRGIL, thou that singest Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire,

  Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre;

  II.

  Landscape-lover, lord of language more than he that sang the ‘Works and Days,’

  All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase;

  III.

  Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;

  All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word;

  IV.

  Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers;

  Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;

  V.

  Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be,

  Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea;

  VI.

  Thou that seëst Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind;

  Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind;

  VII.

  Light among the vanish’d ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore;

  Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to rise no more;

  VIII.

  Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Cæsar’s dome —

  Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome —

  IX.

  Now the Rome of slaves hath perish’d, and the Rome of freemen holds her place,

  I, from out the Northern Island sunder’d once from all the human race,

  X.

  I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began,

  Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.

  The Dead Prophet

  182–

  I.

  DEAD!

  And the Muses cried with a stormy cry

  ‘Send them no more, for evermore.

  Let the people die.’

  II.

  Dead!

  ‘Is it he then brought so low?’

  And a careless people flock’d from the fields

  With a purse to pay for the show.

  III.

  Dead, who had served his time,

  Was one of the people’s kings,

  Had labour’d in lifting them out of slime,

  And showing them, souls have wings!

  IV.

  Dumb on the winter heath he lay.

  His friends had stript him bare,

  And roll’d his nakedness everyway

  That all the crowd might stare.

  V.

  A storm-worn signpost not to be read,

  And a tree with a moulder’d nest

  On its barkless bones, stood stark by the dead;

  And behind him, low in the West,

  VI.

  With shifting ladders of shadow and light,

  And blurr’d in colour and form,

  The sun hung over the gates of Night,

  And glared at a coming storm.

  VII.

  Then glided a vulturous Beldam forth,

  That on dumb death had thriven;

  They call’d her ‘Reverence’ here upon earth,

  And ‘The Curse of the Prophet’ in Heaven.

  VIII.

  She knelt—’We worship him’ — all but wept —

  ‘So great so noble was he!’

  She clear’d her sight, she arose, she swept

  The dust of earth from her knee.

  IX.

  ‘Great! for he spoke and the people heard,

  And his eloquence caught like a flame

  From zone to zone of the world, till his Word

  Had won him a noble name.

  X.

  Noble! he sung, and the sweet sound ran

  Thro’ palace and cottage door,

  For he touch’d on the whole sad planet of man,

  The kings and the rich and the poor;

  XI.

  And he sung not alone of an old sun set,

  But a sun coming up in his youth!

  Great and noble — O yes — but yet —

  For man is a lover of Truth,

  XII.

  And bound to follow, wherever she go

  Stark-naked, and up or down,

  Thro’ her high hill-passes of stainless snow,

  Or the foulest sewer of the town —

  XIII.

  Noble and great — O ay — but then,

  Tho’ a prophet should have his due,

  Was he noblier-fashion’d than other men?

  Shall we see to it, I and you?

  XIV.

  For since he would sit on a Prophet’s seat,

  As a lord of the Human soul,

  We needs must scan him from head to feet

  Were it but for a wart or a mole?’

  XV.

  His wife and his child stood by him in tears,

  But she — she push’d them aside.

  ‘Tho’ a name may last for a thousand years,

  Yet a truth is a truth,’ she cried.

  XVI.

  And she that had haunted his pathway still,

  Had often truckled and cower’d

  When he rose in his wrath, and had yielded her will

  To the master, as overpower’d,

  XVII.

  She tumbled his helpless corpse about.

  ‘Small blemish upon the skin!

  But I think we know what is fair without

  Is often as foul within.’

  XVIII.

  She crouch’d, she tore him part from part,

  And out of his body she drew

  The red ‘Blood-eagle’1 of liver and heart;

  She held them up to the view;

  XIX.

  She gabbled, as she groped in the dead,

  And all the people were pleased;

  ‘See, what a little heart,’ she said,

  ‘And the liver is half-diseased!’

  XX.

  She tore the Prophet after death,

  And the people paid her well.

  Lightnings flicker’d along the heath;

  One shriek’d ‘The fires of Hell!

  Early Spring

  I.

  ONCE MORE the He
avenly Power

  Makes all things new,

  And domes the red-plow’d hills

  With loving blue;

  The blackbirds have their wills,

  The throstles too.

  II.

  Opens a door in heaven;

  From skies of glass

  A Jacob’s ladder falls

  On greening grass,

  And o’er the mountain-walls

  Young angels pass.

  III.

  Before them fleets the shower,

  And burst the buds,

  And shine the level lands,

  And flash the floods;

  The stars are from their hands

  Flung thro’ the woods,

  IV.

  The woods with living airs

  How softly fann’d,

  Light airs from where the deep,

  All down the sand,

  Is breathing in his sleep,

  Heard by the land.

  V.

  O, follow, leaping blood,

  The season’s lure!

  O heart, look down and up

  Serene, secure,

  Warm as the crocus cup,

  Like snowdrops, pure!

  VI.

  Past, Future glimpse and fade

  Thro’ some slight spell,

  A gleam from yonder vale,

  Some far blue fell,

  And sympathies, how frail,

  In sound and smell!

  VII.

  Till at thy chuckled note,

  Thou twinkling bird,

  The fairy fancies range,

  And, lightly stirr’d,

  Ring little bells of change

  From word to word.

  VIII.

  For now the Heavenly Power

  Makes all things new,

  And thaws the cold, and fills

  The flower with dew;

  The blackbirds have their wills,

  The poets too.

  Prefatory Poem to My Brother’s Sonnets

  Midnight, June 30, 1879

  I.

  MIDNIGHT — in no midsummer tune

  The breakers lash the shores:

  The cuckoo of a joyless June

  Is calling out of doors:

  And thou hast vanish’d from thine own

  To that which looks like rest,

  True brother, only to be known

  By those who love thee best.

  II.

  Midnight — and joyless June gone by,

  And from the deluged park

  The cuckoo of a worse July

  Is calling thro’ the dark:

  But thou art silent underground,

  And o’er thee streams the rain,

  True poet, surely to be found

  When Truth is found again.

  III.

  And now, in these unsummer’d skies

  The summer bird is still,

  Far off a phantom cuckoo cries

  From out a phantom hill;

  And thro’ this midnight breaks the sun

  Of sixty years away,

  The light of days when life begun,

  The days that seem to-day,

  When all my griefs were shared with thee,

  As all my hopes were thine —

  As all thou wert was one with me,

  May all thou art be mine!

  Frater Ave atque Vale

  ROW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!

  So they row’d, and there we landed—’O venusta Sirmio!’

  There to me thro’ all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

  There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

  Came that ‘Ave atque Vale’ of the Poet’s hopeless woe,

  Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,

  ‘Frater Ave atque Vale’ — as we wander’d to and fro

  Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below

  Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

  Helen’s Tower

  Written at the request of my friend, Lord Dufferin.

  HELEN’S TOWER, here I stand,

  Dominant over sea and land.

  Son’s love built me, and I hold

  Mother’s love in letter’d gold.

  Love is in and out of time,

  I am mortal stone and lime.

  Would my granite girth were strong

  As either love, to last as long

  I should wear my crown entire

  To and thro’ the Doomsday fire,

  And be found of angel eyes

  In earth’s recurring Paradise.

  Epitaph on Lord Stratford de Redcliffe

  In Westminster Abbey

  THOU third great Canning, stand among our best

  And noblest, now thy long day’s work hath ceased,

  Here silent in our Minster of the West

  Who wert the voice of England in the East.

  Epitaph on General Gordon

  In the Gordon Boys’ National Memorial Home near Woking

  WARRIOR of God, man’s friend, and tyrant’s foe,

  Now somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan,

  Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know

  This earth has never borne a nobler man.

  Epitaph on Caxton

  In St. Margaret’s, Westminster

  FIAT LUX (his motto)

  THY PRAYER was ‘Light — more Light — while Time shall last!’

  Thou rawest a glory growing on the night,

  But not the shadows which that light would cast,

  Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light.

  To the Duke of Argyll

  O PATRIOT Statesman, be thou wise to know

  The limits of resistance, and the bounds

  Determining concession; still be bold

  Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;

  And be thy heart a fortress to maintain

  The day against the moment, and the year

  Against the day; thy voice, a music heard

  Thro’ all the yells and counter-yells of feud

  And faction, and thy will, a power to make

  This ever-changing world of circumstance,

  In changing, chime with never-changing Law.

  Hands all Round

  FIRST PLEDGE our Queen this solemn night,

  Then drink to England, every guest;

  That man’s the best Cosmopolite

  Who loves his native country best.

  May freedom’s oak for ever live

  With stronger life from day to day;

  That man’s the true Conservative

  Who lops the moulder’d branch away.

  Hands all round!

  God the traitor’s hope confound!

  To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

  And the great name of England, round and round.

  To all the loyal hearts who long

  To keep our English Empire whole!

  To all our noble sons, the strong

  New England of the Southern Pole!

  To England under Indian skies,

  To those dark millions of her realm!

  To Canada whom we love and prize,

  Whatever statesman hold the helm.

  Hands all round!

  God the traitor’s hope confound!

  To this great name of England drink, my friends,

  And all her glorious empire, round and round.

  To all our statesmen so they be

  True leaders of the land’s desire!

  To both our Houses, may they see

  Beyond the borough and the shire!

  We sail’d wherever ship could sail,

  We founded many a mighty state;

  Pray God our greatness may not fail

  Thro’ craven fears of being great.

  Hands all round!

  God the traitor’s hope confound!

  To this great cause of Freed
om drink my friends,

  And the great name of England, round and round.

  Freedom

  I.

  O THOU so fair in summers gone,

  While yet thy fresh and virgin soul

  Inform’d the pillar’d Parthenon,

  The glittering Capitol;

  II.

  So fair in southern sunshine bathed,

  But scarce of such majestic mien

  As here with forehead vapor-swathed

  In meadows ever green;

  III.

  For thou — when Athens reign’d and Rome,

  Thy glorious eyes were dimm’d with pain

  To mark in many a freeman’s home

  The slave, the scourge, the chain;

  IV.

  O follower of the Vision, still

  In motion to the distant gleam

  Howe’er blind force and brainless will

  May jar thy golden dream

  V.

  Of Knowledge fusing class with class,

  Of civic Hate no more to be,

  Of Love to leaven all the mass,

  Till every soul be free;

  VI.

  Who yet, like Nature, wouldst not mar

  By changes all too fierce and fast

  This order of her Human Star,

  This heritage of the past;

  VII.

  O scorner of the party cry

  That wanders from the public good,

  Thou — when the nations rear on high

  Their idol smear’d with blood,

  VIII.

  And when they roll their idol down —

  Of saner worship sanely proud;

  Thou loather of the lawless crown

  As of the lawless crowd;

  IX.

  How long thine ever-growing mind

  Hath still’d the blast and strown the wave,

  Tho’ some of late would raise a wind

  To sing thee to thy grave,

  X.

  Men loud against all forms of power —

  Unfurnish’d brows, tempestuous tongues,

  Expecting all things in an hour —

  Brass mouths and iron lungs!

  Poets and their Bibliographies

  OLD POETS foster’d under friendlier skies,

  Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,

  At dawn, and lavish all the golden day

  To make them wealthier in his readers’ eyes;

  And you, old popular Horace, you the wise

  Adviser of the nine-years-ponder’d lay,

  And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay,

  Catullus, whose dead songster never dies;

  If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere

  That once had roll’d you round and round the sun,

  You see your Art still shrined in human shelves,

  You should be jubilant that you flourish’d here

  Before the Love of Letters, overdone,

  Had swampt the sacred poets with themselves.

  To H.R.H. Princess Beatrice