Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;

  Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.

  Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?

  Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.

  Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be

  Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

  Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,

  Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?

  Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,

  Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.

  Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.

  Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.

  Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,

  Kindly landlord, boon companion — youthful jealousy is a liar.

  Cast the poison from your bosom, oust the madness from your brain.

  Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.

  Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,

  Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

  Yonder lies our young sea-village — Art and Grace are less and less:

  Science grows and Beauty dwindles — roofs of slated hideousness!

  There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,

  Till the peasant cow shall butt the ‘Lion passant’ from his field.

  Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence,

  In the common deluge drowning old political common-sense!

  Poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled!

  All I loved are vanish’d voices, all my steps are on the dead.

  All the world is ghost to me, and as the phantom disappears,

  Forward far and far from here is all the hope of eighty years.

  . . . . .

  In this Hostel — I remember — I repent it o’er his grave —

  Like a clown — by chance he met me — I refused the hand he gave.

  From that casement where the trailer mantles all the mouldering bricks —

  I was then in early boyhood, Edith but a child of six —

  While I shelter’d in this archway from a day of driving showers —

  Peept the winsome face of Edith like a flower among the flowers.

  Here to-night! the Hall to-morrow, when they toll the Chapel bell!

  Shall I hear in one dark room a wailing, ‘I have loved thee well.’

  Then a peal that shakes the portal — one has come to claim his bride,

  Her that shrank, and put me from her, shriek’d, and started from my side —

  Silent echoes! You, my Leonard, use and not abuse your day,

  Move among your people, know them, follow him who led the way,

  Strove for sixty widow’d years to help his homelier brother men,

  Served the poor, and built the cottage, raised the school, and drain’d the fen.

  Hears he now the Voice that wrong’d him? who shall swear it cannot be?

  Earth would never touch her worst, were one in fifty such as he.

  Ere she gain her Heavenly-best, a God must mingle with the game:

  Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name,

  Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of Ill,

  Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will.

  Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

  Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

  Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half-control his doom —

  Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

  Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

  I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

  Gone at eighty, mine own age, and I and you will bear the pall;

  Then I leave thee Lord and Master, latest Lord of Locksley Hall.

  The Fleet

  I.

  YOU, you, if you shall fail to understand

  What England is, and what her all-in-all,

  On you will come the curse of all the land,

  Should this old England fall

  Which Nelson left so great.

  II.

  His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on earth,

  Our own fair isle, the lord of every sea —

  Her fuller franchise — what would that be worth —

  Her ancient fame of Free —

  Where she . . . a fallen state?

  III.

  Her dauntless army scatter’d, and so small,

  Her island-myriads fed from alien lands —

  The fleet of England is her all-in-all;

  Her fleet is in your hands,

  And in her fleet her fate.

  IV.

  You, you, that have the ordering of her fleet,

  If you should only compass her disgrace,

  When all men starve, the wild mob’s million feet

  Will kick you from your place,

  But then too late, too late.

  Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen

  Written at the Request of the Prince of Wales

  I.

  WELCOME, welcome with one voice!

  In your welfare we rejoice,

  Sons and brothers that have sent,

  From isle and cape and continent,

  Produce of your field and flood,

  Mount and mine, and primal wood;

  Works of subtle brain and hand,

  And splendors of the morning land,

  Gifts from every British zone;

  Britons, hold your own!

  II.

  May we find, as ages run,

  The mother featured in the son;

  And may yours for ever be

  That old strength and constancy

  Which has made your fathers great

  In our ancient island State,

  And wherever her flag fly,

  Glorying between sea and sky,

  Makes the might of Britain known;

  Britons, hold your own!

  III.

  Britain fought her sons of yore —

  Britain fail’d; and never more,

  Careless of our growing kin,

  Shall we sin our father’s sin,

  Men that in a narrower day —

  Unprophetic rulers they —

  Drove from out the mother’s nest

  That young eagle of the West

  To forage for herself alone;

  Britons, hold your own!

  IV.

  Sharers of our glorious past,

  Brothers, must we part at last?

  Shall we not thro’ good and ill

  Cleave to one another still?

  Britain’s myriad voices call,

  ‘Sons, be welded each and all

  Into one imperial whole,

  One with Britain, heart and soul!

  One life, one flag, one fleet, one throne!’

  Britons, hold your own!

  To W.C. Macready

  1851

  FAREWELL, Macready, since to-night we part;

  Full-handed thunders often have confessed

  Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.

  We thank thee with our voice, and from the heart.

  Farewell, Macready, since this night we part,

  Go, take thine honors home; rank with the best,

  Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest

  Who made a nation purer through their art.

  Thine is it that our drama did not die,

  Nor flicker down to brainless pantomine,

&n
bsp; And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.

  Farewell, Macready, moral, grave, sublime;

  Our Shakespeare’s bland and universal eye

  Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee.

  •

  DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS

  CONTENTS

  To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava

  On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria

  To Professor Jebb,

  With the Following Poem.

  Demeter and Persephone

  Owd Roä.1

  Vastness

  The Ring

  Forlorn

  Happy

  To Ulysses 1

  To Mary Boyle

  The Progress of Spring

  Merlin and The Gleam

  Romney’s Remorse

  Parnassus

  By an Evolutionist

  OLD AGE

  Far — far — away

  Politics

  Beautiful City

  The Roses on the Terrace

  The Play

  On one who affected an Effeminate Manner

  To one who ran down the English

  The Snowdrop

  The Throstle

  The Oak

  In Memoriam. W. G. Ward

  To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava

  I.

  AT TIMES our Britain cannot rest,

  At times her steps are swift and rash;

  She moving, at her girdle clash

  The golden keys of East and West.

  II.

  Not swift or rash, when late she lent

  The sceptres of her West, her East,

  To one, that ruling has increased

  Her greatness and her self-content.

  III.

  Your rule has made the people love

  Their ruler. Your viceregal days

  Have added fulness to the phrase

  Of ‘Gauntlet in the velvet glove.’

  IV.

  But since your name will grow with Time,

  Not all, as honouring your fair fame

  Of Statesman, have I made the name

  A golden portal to my rhyme:

  V.

  But more, that you and yours may know

  From me and mine, how dear a debt

  We owed you, and are owing yet

  To you and yours, and still would owe.

  VI.

  For he — your India was his Fate,

  And drew him over sea to you —

  He fain had ranged her thro’ and thro’,

  To serve her myriads and the State, —

  VII.

  A soul that, watch’d from earliest youth,

  And on thro’ many a brightening year,

  Had never swerved for craft or fear,

  By one side-path, from simple truth;

  VIII.

  Who might have chased and claspt Renown

  And caught her chaplet here — and there

  In haunts of jungle-poison’d air

  The flame of life went wavering down;

  IX.

  But ere he left your fatal shore,

  And lay on that funereal boat,

  Dying, ‘Unspeakable’ he wrote

  ‘Their kindness,’ and he wrote no more;

  X.

  And sacred is the latest word;

  And now the Was, the Might-have-been,

  And those lone rites I have not seen,

  And one dear sound I have not heard,

  XI.

  Are dreams that scarce will let me be,

  Not there to bid my boy farewell,

  When That within the coffin fell,

  Fell — and flash’d into the Red Sea,

  XII.

  Beneath a hard Arabian moon

  And alien stars. To question, why

  The sons before the fathers die,

  Not mine! and I may meet him soon;

  XIII.

  But while my life’s late eve endures,

  Nor settles into hueless gray,

  My memories of his briefer day

  Will mix with love for you and yours.

  On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria

  I.

  FIFTY TIMES the rose has flower’d and faded,

  Fifty times the golden harvest fallen,

  Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre.

  II.

  She beloved for a kindliness

  Rare in fable or history,

  Queen, and Empress of India,

  Crown’d so long with a diadem

  Never worn by a worthier,

  Now with prosperous auguries

  Comes at last to the bounteous

  Crowning year of her Jubilee.

  III.

  Nothing of the lawless, of the despot,

  Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious,

  All is gracious, gentle, great and queenly.

  IV.

  You then joyfully, all of you,

  Set the mountain aflame to-night,

  Shoot your stars to the firmament,

  Deck your houses, illuminate

  All your towns for a festival,

  And in each let a multitude

  Loyal, each, to the heart of it,

  One full voice of allegiance,

  Hail the fair Ceremonial

  Of this year of her Jubilee.

  V.

  Queen, as true to womanhood as Queenhood,

  Glorying in the glories of her people,

  Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest!

  VI.

  You, that wanton in affluence,

  Spare not now to be bountiful,

  Call your poor to regale with you,

  All the lowly, the destitute,

  Make their neighborhood healthfuller,

  Give your gold to the hospital,

  Let the weary be comforted,

  Let the needy be banqueted,

  Let the maim’d in his heart rejoice

  At this glad Ceremonial,

  And this year of her Jubilee.

  VII.

  Henry’s fifty years are all in shadow,

  Gray with distance Edward’s fifty summers,

  Even her Grandsire’s fifty half forgotten.

  VIII.

  You, the Patriot Architect,

  You that shape for eternity,

  Raise a stately memorial,

  Make it regally gorgeous,

  Some Imperial Institute,

  Rich in symbol, in ornament,

  Which may speak to the centuries,

  All the centuries after us,

  Of this great Ceremonial,

  And this year of her Jubilee.

  IX.

  Fifty years of ever-broadening Commerce!

  Fifty years of ever-brightening Science!

  Fifty years of ever-widening Empire!

  X.

  You, the Mighty, the Fortunate,

  You, the Lord-territorial,

  You, the Lord-manufacturer,

  You, the hardy, laborious,

  Patient children of Albion,

  You, Canadian, Indian,

  Australasian, African,

  All your hearts be in harmony,

  All your voices in unison.

  Singing, ‘Hail to the glorious

  Golden year of her Jubilee!’

  XI.

  Are there thunders moaning in the distance?

  Are there spectres moving in the darkness?

  Trust the Hand of Light will lead her people,

  Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish,

  And the Light is Victor, and the darkness

  Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages.

  To Professor Jebb,

  With the Following Poem.

  FAIR THINGS are slow to fade away,

  Bear witness you, that yesterday1

  From out the Ghost of Pindar inyou

  Roll’d an Olympian; and they say2

  That here the torpid mummy wheat


  Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet

  As that which gilds the glebe of England,

  Sunn’d with a summer of milder heat.

  So may this legend for awhile,

  If greeted by your classic smile,

  Tho’ dead in its Trinacrian Enna,

  Blossom again on a colder isle.

  Demeter and Persephone

  (In Enna)

  FAINT as a climate-changing bird that flies

  All night across the darkness, and at dawn

  Falls on the threshold of her native land,

  And can no more, thou camest, O my child,

  Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,

  Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb

  With passing thro’ at once from state to state,

  Until I brought thee hither, that the day,

  When here thy hands let fall the gather’d flower,

  Might break thro’ clouded memories once again

  On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale

  Saw thee, and flash’d into a frolic of song

  And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,

  When first she peers along the tremulous deep,

  Fled wavering o’er thy face, and chased away

  That shadow of a likeness to the king

  Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!

  Queen of the dead no more — my child! Thine eyes

  Again were human-godlike, and the Sun

  Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,

  And robed thee in his day from head to feet —

  ‘Mother!’ and I was folded in thine arms.

  Child, those imperial, disimpassion’d eyes

  Awed even me at first, thy mother — eyes

  That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power

  Draw downward into Hades with his drift

  Of flickering spectres, lighted from below

  By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;

  But when before have Gods or men beheld

  The Life that had descended re-arise,

  And lighted from above him by the Sun?

  So mighty was the mother’s childless cry,

  A cry that rang thro’ Hades, Earth, and Heaven!

  So in this pleasant vale we stand again,

  The field of Enna, now once more ablaze

  With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,

  All flowers — but for one black blur of earth

  Left by that closing chasm, thro’ which the car

  Of dark Aïdoneus rising rapt thee hence.

  And here, my child, tho’ folded in thine arms,

  I feel the deathless heart of motherhood

  Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe

  Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence

  The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,

  Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,

  And all at once their arch’d necks, midnight-maned,