Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

O foolish dreams, that you, that I, would slight our marriage oath

  I held you at that moment even dearer than before;

  Now God has made you leper in His loving care for both,

  That we might cling together, never doubt each other more.

  XXIV.

  The Priest, who join’d you to the dead, has join’d our hands of old;

  If man and wife be but one flesh, let mine be leprous too,

  As dead from all the human race as if beneath the mould;

  If you be dead, then I am dead, who only live for you.

  XXV.

  Would Earth tho’ hid in cloud not be follow’d by the Moon?

  The leech forsake the dying bed for terror of his life?

  The shadow leave the Substance in the brooding light of noon?

  Or if I had been the leper would you have left the wife?

  XXVI.

  Not take them? Still you wave me off — poor roses — must I go —

  I have worn them year by year — from the bush we both had set —

  What? fling them to you? — well — that were hardly gracious. No!

  Your plague but passes by the touch. A little nearer yet!

  XXVII.

  There, there! he buried you, the Priest; the Priest is not to blame,

  He joins us once again, to his either office true:

  I thank him. I am happy, happy. Kiss me. In the name

  Of the everlasting God, I will live and die with You.

  To Ulysses 1

  I.

  ULYSSES, much-experienced man,

  Whose eyes have known this globe of ours,

  Her tribes of men, and trees, and flowers,

  From Corrientes to Japan,

  II.

  To you that bask below the Line,

  I soaking here in winter wet —

  The century’s three strong eights have met

  To drag me down to seventy-nine

  III.

  In summer if I reach my day —

  To you, yet young, who breathe the balm

  Of summer-winters by the palm

  And orange grove of Paraguay,

  IV.

  I tolerant of the colder time,

  Who love the winter woods, to trace

  On paler heavens the branching grace

  Of leafless elm, or naked lime,

  V.

  And see my cedar green, and there

  My giant ilex keeping leaf

  When frost is keen and days are brief —

  Or marvel how in English air

  VI.

  My yucca, which no winter quells,

  Altho’ the months have scarce begun,

  Has push’d toward our faintest sun

  A spike of half-accomplish’d bells —

  VII.

  Or watch the waving pine which here

  The warrior of Caprera set,2

  A name that earth will not forget

  Till earth has roll’d her latest year —

  VIII.

  I, once half-crazed for larger light

  On broader zones beyond the foam,

  But chaining fancy now at home

  Among the quarried downs of Wight,

  IX.

  Not less would yield full thanks to you

  For your rich gift, your tale of lands

  I know not,3 your Arabian sands;

  Your cane, your palm, tree-fern, bamboo,

  X.

  The wealth of tropic bower and brake;

  Your Oriental Eden-isles,4

  Where man, nor only Nature smiles;

  Your wonder of the boiling lake;5

  XI.

  Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,6

  Phra-bat7 the step; your Pontic coast;

  Crag-cloister;8 Anatolian Ghost;9

  Hong-Kong,10 Karnac,11 and all the rest.

  XII.

  Thro’ which I follow’d line by line

  Your leading hand, and came, my friend,

  To prize your various book, and send

  A gift of slenderer value, mine.

  To Mary Boyle

  WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM

  I.

  SPRING-FLOWERS! While you still delay to take

  Your leave of town,

  Our elm-tree’s ruddy-hearted blossom-flake

  Is fluttering down.

  II.

  Be truer to your promise. There! I heard

  Our cuckoo call.

  Be needle to the magnet of your word,

  Nor wait, till all

  III.

  Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain

  And garden pass,

  And all the gold from each laburnum chain

  Drop to the grass.

  IV.

  Is memory with your Marian gone to rest,

  Dead with the dead?

  For ere she left us, when we met, you prest

  My hand, and said

  V.

  ‘I come with your spring-flowers.’ You came not, my friend;

  My birds would sing,

  You heard not. Take then this spring-flower I send,

  This song of spring,

  VI.

  Found yesterday — forgotten mine own rhyme

  By mine old self,

  As I shall be forgotten by old Time,

  Laid on the shelf —

  VII.

  A rhyme that flower’d betwixt the whitening sloe

  And kingcup blaze,

  And more than half a hundred years ago,

  In rick-fire days,

  VIII.

  When Dives loathed the times, and paced his land

  In fear of worse,

  And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand

  Fill with his purse.

  IX.

  For lowly minds were madden’d to the height

  By tonguester tricks,

  And once — I well remember that red night

  When thirty ricks,

  X.

  All flaming, made an English homestead hell —

  These hands of mine

  Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well

  Along the line,

  XI.

  When this bare dome had not begun to gleam

  Thro’ youthful curls,

  And you were then a lover’s fairy dream,

  His girl of girls;

  XII.

  And you, that now are lonely, and with Grief

  Sit face to face,

  Might find a flickering glimmer of relief

  In change of place.

  XIII.

  What use to brood? This life of mingled pains

  And joys to me,

  Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains

  The Mystery.

  XIV.

  Let golden youth bewail the friend, the wife,

  For ever gone.

  He dreams of that long walk thro’ desert life

  Without the one.

  XV.

  The silver year should cease to mourn and sigh —

  Not long to wait —

  So close are we, dear Mary, you and I

  To that dim gate.

  XVI.

  Take, read! and be the faults your Poet makes

  Or many or few,

  He rests content, if his young music wakes

  A wish in you

  XVII.

  To change our dark Queen-city, all her realm

  Of sound and smoke,

  For his clear heaven, and these few lanes of elm

  And whispering oak.

  The Progress of Spring

  I.

  THE GROUNDFLAME of the crocus breaks the mould,

  Fair Spring slides hither o’er the Southern sea,

  Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold

  That trembles not to kisses of the bee:

  Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves

  The spear of ice has wept itself away.

  And hour by
hour unfolding woodbine leaves

  O’er his uncertain shadow droops the day.

  She comes! The loosen’d rivulets run;

  The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair;

  Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun,

  Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bare

  To breaths of balmier air;

  II.

  Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her.

  About her glance the tits, and shriek the jays,

  Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker,

  The linnet’s bosom blushes at her gaze,

  While round her brows a woodland culver flits,

  Watching her large light eyes and gracious looks,

  And in her open palm a halcyon sits

  Patient — the secret splendor of the brooks.

  Come Spring! She comes on waste and wood,

  On farm and field: but enter also here,

  Diffuse thyself at will thro’ all my blood,

  And, tho’ thy violet sicken into sere,

  Lodge with me all the year!

  III.

  Once more a downy drift against the brakes,

  Self-darken’d in the sky, descending slow!

  But gladly see I thro’ the wavering flakes

  Yon blanching apricot like snow in snow.

  These will thine eyes not brook in forest-paths,

  On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech;

  They fuse themselves to little spicy baths,

  Solved in the tender blushes of the peach;

  They lose themselves and die

  On that new life that gems the hawthorn line;

  Thy gay lent-lillies wave and put them by,

  And out once more in varnish’d glory shine

  Thy stars of celandine.

  IV.

  She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours,

  But in the tearful splendor of her smiles

  I see the slowly-thickening chestnut towers

  Fill out the spaces by the barren tiles.

  Now past her feet the swallow circling flies,

  A clamorous cuckoo stoops to meet her hand;

  Her light makes rainbows in my closing eyes,

  I hear a charm of song thro’ all the land.

  Come, Spring! She comes, and Earth is glad

  To roll her North below thy deepening dome,

  But ere thy maiden birk be wholly clad,

  And these low bushes dip their twigs in foam,

  Make all true hearths thy home.

  V.

  Across my garden! and the thicket stirs,

  The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets,

  The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs,

  The starling claps his tiny castanets.

  Still round her forehead wheels the woodland dove,

  And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew,

  The kingcup fills her footprint, and above

  Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue.

  Hail, ample presence of a Queen,

  Bountiful, beautiful, apparell’d gay,

  Whose mantle, every shade of glancing green,

  Flies back in fragrant breezes to display

  A tunic white as May!

  VI.

  She whispers, ‘From the South I bring you balm,

  For on a tropic mountain was I born,

  While some dark dweller by the coco-palm

  Watch’d my far meadow zoned with airy morn;

  From under rose a muffled moan of floods;

  I sat beneath a solitude of snow;

  There no one came, the turf was fresh, the woods

  Plunged gulf on gulf thro’ all their vales below.

  I saw beyond their silent tops

  The steaming marshes of the scarlet cranes,

  The slant seas leaning on the mangrove copse,

  And summer basking in the sultry plains

  About a land of canes.

  VII.

  ‘Then from my vapor-girdle soaring forth

  I scaled the buoyant highway of the birds,

  And drank the dews and drizzle of the North,

  That I might mix with men, and hear their words

  On pathway’d plains; for — while my hand exults

  Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers

  To work old laws of Love to fresh results,

  Thro’ manifold effect of simple powers —

  I too would teach the man

  Beyond the darker hour to see the bright,

  That his fresh life may close as it began,

  The still-fulfilling promise of a light

  Narrowing the bounds of night.’

  VIII.

  So wed thee with my soul, that I may mark

  The coming year’s great good and varied ills,

  And new developments, whatever spark

  Be struck from out the clash of warring wills;

  Or whether, since our nature cannot rest,

  The smoke of war’s volcano burst again

  From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West,

  Old Empires, dwellings of the kings of men;

  Or should those fail that hold the helm,

  While the long day of knowledge grows and warms,

  And in the heart of this most ancient realm

  A hateful voice be utter’d, and alarms

  Sounding ‘To arms! to arms!’

  IX.

  A simpler, saner lesson might he learn

  Who reads thy gradual process, Holy Spring.

  Thy leaves possess the season in their turn,

  And in their time thy warblers rise on wing.

  How surely glidest thou from March to May,

  And changest, breathing it, the sullen wind,

  Thy scope of operation, day by day,

  Larger and fuller, like the human mind!

  Thy warmths from bud to bud

  Accomplish that blind model in the seed,

  And men have hopes, which race the restless blood,

  That after many changes may succeed

  Life which is Life indeed.

  Merlin and The Gleam

  I.

  O YOUNG Mariner,

  You from the haven

  Under the sea-cliff,

  You that are watching

  The gray Magician

  With eyes of wonder,

  I am Merlin,

  And I am dying,

  I am Merlin

  Who follow The Gleam.

  II.

  Mighty the Wizard

  Who found me at sunrise

  Sleeping, and woke me

  And learn’d me Magic!

  Great the Master,

  And sweet the Magic,

  When over the valley,

  In early summers,

  Over the mountain,

  On human faces,

  And all around me,

  Moving to melody,

  Floated The Gleam.

  III.

  Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it,

  A barbarous people,

  Blind to the magic,

  And deaf to the melody,

  Snarl’d at and cursed me.

  A demon vext me,

  The light retreated,

  The landskip darken’d,

  The melody deaden’d,

  The Master whisper’d

  ‘Follow The Gleam.’

  IV.

  Then to the melody,

  Over a wilderness

  Gliding, and glancing at

  Elf of the woodland,

  Gnome of the cavern,

  Griffin and Giant,

  And dancing of Fairies

  In desolate hollows,

  And wraiths of the mountain,

  And rolling of dragons

  By warble of water,

  Or cataract music

  Of falling torrents,

  Flitted The Gleam.

  V.

  Down from the mo
untain

  And over the level,

  And streaming and shining on

  Silent river,

  Silvery willow,

  Pasture and plowland,

  Horses and oxen,

  Innocent maidens,

  Garrulous children,

  Homestead and harvest,

  Reaper and gleaner,

  And rough-ruddy faces

  Of lowly labour,

  Slided The Gleam. —

  VI.

  Then, with a melody

  Stronger and statelier,

  Led me at length

  To the city and palace

  Of Arthur the king;

  Touch’d at the golden

  Cross of the churches,

  Flash’d on the Tournament,

  Flicker’d and bicker’d

  From helmet to helmet,

  And last on the forehead

  Of Arthur the blameless

  Rested The Gleam.

  VII.

  Clouds and darkness

  Closed upon Camelot;

  Arthur had vanish’d

  I knew not whither,

  The king who loved me,

  And cannot die;

  For out of the darkness

  Silent and slowly

  The Gleam, that had waned to a wintry glimmer

  On icy fallow

  And faded forest,

  Drew to the valley

  Named of the shadow,

  And slowly brightening

  Out of the glimmer,

  And slowly moving again to a melody

  Yearningly tender,

  Fell on the shadow,

  No longer a shadow,

  But clothed with The Gleam.

  VIII.

  And broader and brighter

  The Gleam flying onward,

  Wed to the melody,

  Sang thro’ the world;

  And slower and fainter,

  Old and weary,

  But eager to follow,

  I saw, whenever

  In passing it glanced upon

  Hamlet or city,

  That under the Crosses

  The dead man’s garden,

  The mortal hillock,

  Would break into blossom;

  And so to the land’s

  Last limit I came ——

  And can no longer,

  But die rejoicing,

  For thro’ the Magic

  Of Him the Mighty,

  Who taught me in childhood,

  There on the border

  Of boundless Ocean,

  And all but in Heaven

  Hovers The Gleam.

  IX.

  Not of the sunlight,

  Not of the moonlight,

  Not of the starlight!

  O young Mariner,

  Down to the haven,

  Call your companions,

  Launch your vessel,

  And crowd your canvas,

  And, ere it vanishes

  Over the margin,

  After it, follow it,

  Follow The Gleam.

  Romney’s Remorse

  ‘I read Hayley’s Life of Romney the other day — Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter; but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and because Sir Joshua and others had said that “marriage spoilt an artist” almost immediately left his wife in the North and scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney’s pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure.’ (Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i.)