Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Remembering all the golden hours

  Now silent, and so many dead,

  And him the last; and laying flowers,

  This wreath, above his honour’d head,

  And praying that, when I from hence

  Shall fade with him into the unknown,

  My close of earth’s experience

  May prove as peaceful as his own.

  TO JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE

  My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be

  A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest

  To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast;

  Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:

  Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,

  Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily;

  But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy

  To embattail and to wall about thy cause

  With iron-worded proof, hating to hark

  The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone

  Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk

  Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne

  Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark

  Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.

  TO J. W. BLAKESLEY

  AFTERWARDS DEAN OF LINCOLN

  I

  Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,

  Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain

  The knots that tangle human creeds,

  The wounding cords that bind and strain

  The heart until it bleeds,

  Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn

  Roof not a glance so keen as thine:

  If aught of prophecy be mine,

  Thou wilt not live in vain.

  II

  Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;

  Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow:

  Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now

  With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.

  Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords

  Can do away that ancient lie;

  A gentler death shall Falsehood die,

  Shot thro’ and thro’ with cunning words.

  III

  Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,

  Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,

  Thy kingly intellect shall feed,

  Until she be an athlete bold,

  And weary with a finger’s touch

  Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;

  Like that strange angel which of old,

  Until the breaking of the light,

  Wrestled with wandering Israel,

  Past Yabbok brook the livelong night,

  And heaven’s mazed signs stood still

  In the dim tract of Penuel.

  TO R. C. TRENCH

  AFTERWARDS ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN

  (Dedication of “The Palace of Art”)

  I send you here a sort of allegory,

  (For you will understand it) of a soul,

  A sinful soul possess’d of many gifts,

  A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,

  A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,

  That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen

  In all varieties of mould and mind)

  And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,

  Good only for its beauty, seeing not

  That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters

  That doat upon each other, friends to man,

  Living together under the same roof,

  And never can be sunder’d without tears.

  And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be

  Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie

  Howling in outer darkness. Not for this

  Was common clay ta’en from the common earth

  Moulded by God, and temper’d with the tears

  Of angels to the perfect shape of man.

  TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD

  Brooks, for they call’d you so that knew you best,

  Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,

  How oft we two have heard St. Mary’s chimes!

  How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,

  Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!

  How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,

  Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,

  Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.

  You man of humorous-melancholy mark,

  Dead of some inward agony — is it so?

  Our kindlier, trustier, Jaques, past away!

  I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark:

  Σκιᾶς ὄναρ — dream of a shadow, go —

  God bless you. I shall join you in a day.

  TO EDMUND LUSHINGTON

  ON HIS MARRIAGE WITH CECILIA TENNYSON

  O true and tried, so well and long,

  Demand not thou a marriage lay;

  In that it is thy marriage day

  Is music more than any song.

  Nor have I felt so much of bliss

  Since first he told me that he loved

  A daughter of our house; nor proved

  Since that dark day a day like this;

  Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er

  Some thrice three years: they went and came,

  Remade the blood and changed the frame,

  And yet is love not less, but more;

  No longer caring to embalm

  In dying songs a dead regret,

  But like a statue solid-set,

  And moulded in colossal calm.

  Regret is dead, but love is more

  Than in the summers that are flown,

  For I myself with these have grown

  To something greater than before;

  Which makes appear the songs I made

  As echoes out of weaker times,

  As half but idle brawling rhymes,

  The sport of random sun and shade.

  But where is she, the bridal flower,

  That must be made a wife ere noon?

  She enters, glowing like the moon

  Of Eden on its bridal bower:

  On me she bends her blissful eyes

  And then on thee; they meet thy look

  And brighten like the star that shook

  Betwixt the palms of paradise.

  O when her life was yet in bud,

  He too foretold the perfect rose.

  For thee she grew, for thee she grows

  For ever, and as fair as good.

  And thou art worthy; full of power;

  As gentle; liberal-minded, great,

  Consistent; wearing all that weight

  Of learning lightly like a flower.

  But now set out: the noon is near,

  And I must give away the bride;

  She fears not, or with thee beside

  And me behind her, will not fear.

  For I that danced her on my knee,

  And watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,

  That shielded all her life from harm

  At last must part with her to thee;

  Now waiting to be made a wife,

  Her feet, my darling, on the dead;

  Their pensive tablets round her head,

  And the most living words of life

  Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,

  The “wilt thou” answer’d, and again

  The “wilt thou” ask’d, till out of twain

  Her sweet “I will” has made you one.

  Now sign your names, which shall be read,

  Mute symbols of a joyful morn,

  By village eyes as yet unborn;

  The names are sign’d, and overhead

  Begins the clash and clang that tells

  The joy to every wandering breeze;

  The blind wall rocks, and on the trees

  The dead leaf trembles to the bells.

  O happy hour, and happier hours

  Await them. Many a mer
ry face

  Salutes them — maidens of the place,

  That pelt us in the porch with flowers.

  O happy hour, behold the bride

  With him to whom her hand I gave.

  They leave the porch, they pass the grave

  That has to-day its sunny side.

  To-day the grave is bright for me,

  For them the light of life increased,

  Who stay to share the morning feast,

  Who rest to-night beside the sea.

  Let all my genial spirits advance

  To meet and greet a whiter sun;

  My drooping memory will not shun

  The foaming grape of eastern France.

  It circles round, and fancy plays,

  And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,

  As drinking health to bride and groom

  We wish them store of happy days.

  Nor count me all to blame if I

  Conjecture of a stiller guest,

  Perchance, perchance, among the rest,

  And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.

  But they must go, the time draws on,

  And those white-favour’d horses wait;

  They rise, but linger; it is late;

  Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.

  A shade falls on us like the dark

  From little cloudlets on the grass,

  But sweeps away as out we pass

  To range the woods, to roam the park,

  Discussing how their courtship grew,

  And talk of others that are wed,

  And how she look’d, and what he said,

  And back we come at fall of dew.

  Again the feast, the speech, the glee,

  The shade of passing thought, the wealth

  Of words and wit, the double health,

  The crowning cup, the three-times-three,

  And last the dance; — till I retire:

  Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,

  And high in heaven the streaming cloud,

  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.

  CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER

  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 to 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!

  Edmund Lushington (Who married Cecilia Tennyson, and was Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow).

  TENNYSON AND LUSHINGTON by Sir Henry Craik, K.C.B., M.P.

  Amongst the group of men attached to Lord Tennyson by bonds of early and life-long friendship, and of reverent affection, there is none in whose case the tie is surrounded with more of peculiar interest than Edmund Lushington. Those who in later years were privileged to know the Poet’s brother-in-law, and learned to appreciate his character, could well understand the closeness of the sympathy between them.

  Edmund Law Lushington was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington, who at one time held important office in Ceylon. The eldest of four gifted brothers, Edmund was born on the 10th of January 1811. The family house was, at first, at Hanwell, from which, some years later, they moved to Park House, near Maidstone. That continued to be the home to which Edmund Lushington returned at every break in his work at Glasgow, and was his permanent residence from his retirement in 1875 until his death on the 13th of July 1893. Young Lushington went to Charterhouse School, and there — as afterwards for a time at Trinity — he had Thackeray as his contemporary. To the friendship thus early begun Thackeray, in long after years, paid a gracious tribute in The Virginians, where he cites the Professor at Glasgow and one at Cambridge (W. H. Thompson) as scholars who could more than hold their own against the great names of older days.

  As his junior at Trinity, Lushington had at first no acquaintance with Tennyson, and he has himself told us how he first came to know him by sight, when Arthur Hallam declaimed his prize essay in the College Chapel, and Tennyson sat on the bench just below listening intently to the words of his friend. Already Tennyson’s name was well known in the University; many of his poems were handed about in manuscript, and the rank to which they were entitled was a topic of discussion in College societies. It was only after two years at Cambridge that Lushington’s friendship with Tennyson began, and as joint members of the “Apostles’” Society they were thrown into close intercourse. In 1832 Lushington was Senior Classic in a notable list, which contained also the names of Shilleto, the famous coach; Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury and Biblical commentator; and William Hepworth Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity. Six years later, in 1838, he was chosen as Professor of Greek in Glasgow from a field which comprised competitors so notable as Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke, and Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. As bearing on this we may quote — as a specimen of his quaint and kindly humour — a letter which Lushington wrote to Tennyson from Addington Park, where he was staying on a visit to the Archbishop on October 13, 1880:

  On Monday there came on a visit Lord Sherbrooke (R. Lowe).... It was good that yesterday morning one pony chaise held three men who, forty-t
wo years ago, were regarded as rival candidates for the Greek Chair at Glasgow, whereby you will at once admit the cogency of the argument that if I had not become Greek Professor I should probably have been either Archbishop of Canterbury or Chancellor of the Exchequer — possibly both, as no doubt in old times the same back has borne both offices.

  This appointment, which banished young Lushington from all the scenes of his early days, did not break the friendship with Tennyson, which had quickly ripened into closest intimacy. In 1840 Tennyson came to visit at Park House, — still Lushington’s home during the long summer vacation, — and in 1842 he was present at that festival of the Maidstone Institute which is described in the opening verses of “The Princess.” The same summer saw the bond drawn tighter by the marriage of Lushington to the Poet’s youngest and best-loved sister, Cecilia. It is that marriage which is acclaimed in immortal words in the Epilogue to “In Memoriam,” and the tribute there paid to the bridegroom is one which comes home to all who knew him, as a faithful epitome of his personality:

  And thou art worthy; full of power;

  As gentle, liberal-minded, great,

  Consistent; wearing all that weight

  Of learning lightly like a flower.

  The marriage became one link more in that enduring friendship. Those who knew Mrs. Lushington in later years — when jet-black hair and brilliant clearness of complexion were still marvellously preserved — can easily picture her earlier beauty, which must have had much of that “profile like that on a coin” — which, we are told, was characteristic of Emily, the betrothed of Arthur Hallam. Mrs. Lushington had a fine contralto voice, with something of the music that one felt in the Poet’s rich tones. She was a charming and even a brilliant companion, and, when in good health, enjoyed society. But Glasgow College — as it was then generally called, amidst the murky surroundings of its old site, close to the reeking slums of the New Vennel — was an abode little fitted for one accustomed to warmer suns and more congenial scenes. Mrs. Lushington’s health was grievously broken, and the northern chills and fogs told heavily on her spirits. She could rarely join her husband at Glasgow, and it became necessary for him, during the session which lasted through the six winter months, to take a house in Edinburgh and rejoin his wife only for week-ends. Attached as Lushington was to his home and his family, the burden of ill-health that lay heavily on his household was a grievous one. It caused him much anxiety. Long pain often racked the nerves and dulled the bright spirit of his wife; his only son died after a long and painful illness, and took the light from his life; a daughter followed that son to the grave; and his brother Henry, whose brilliant poetic gifts had been fully proved in the volume of poems entitled Points of War, which he wrote in conjunction with his brother Franklin, died at Paris in the fulness of his powers. He learned, as he writes in one of his letters to Tennyson, that “the roots of love and sorrow are verily twined together abysmally deep.” But never once, in all his letters, or in any of his views of his fellow-men, did grief or sorrow drive him into bitterness or cynicism, or make him bate a jot of his calm and reverent fortitude or of his deep and generous charity to his fellow-men.