Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome

  (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;

  Where, far from noise and smoke of town,

  I watch the twilight falling brown

  All round a careless-order’d garden

  Close to the ridge of a noble down.

  You’ll have no scandal while you dine,

  But honest talk and wholesome wine,

  And only hear the magpie gossip

  Garrulous under a roof of pine:

  For groves of pine on either hand,

  To break the blast of winter, stand;

  And further on, the hoary Channel

  Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;

  Where, if below the milky steep

  Some ship of battle slowly creep,

  And on thro’ zones of light and shadow

  Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

  We might discuss the Northern sin

  Which made a selfish war begin;

  Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;

  Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:

  Or whether war’s avenging rod

  Shall lash all Europe into blood;

  Till you should turn to dearer matters,

  Dear to the man that is dear to God;

  How best to help the slender store,

  How mend the dwellings, of the poor;

  How gain in life, as life advances,

  Valour and charity more and more.

  Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet

  Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;

  But when the wreath of March has blossom’d,

  Crocus, anemone, violet,

  Or later, pay one visit here,

  For those are few we hold as dear;

  Nor pay but one, but come for many,

  Many and many a happy year.

  January, 1854.

  TO SIR JOHN SIMEON

  IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON

  Nightingales warbled without,

  Within was weeping for thee:

  Shadows of three dead men

  Walk’d in the walks with me,

  Shadows of three dead men and thou wast one of the three.

  Nightingales sang in his woods:

  The Master was far away:

  Nightingales warbled and sang

  Of a passion that lasts but a day;

  Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay.

  Two dead men have I known

  In courtesy like to thee:

  Two dead men have I loved

  With a love that ever will be:

  Three dead men have I loved and thou art last of the three.

  TO EDWARD LEAR, ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE

  Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls

  Of water, sheets of summer glass,

  The long divine Peneïan pass,

  The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

  Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,

  With such a pencil, such a pen,

  You shadow forth to distant men,

  I read and felt that I was there:

  And trust me while I turn’d the page,

  And track’d you still on classic ground,

  I grew in gladness till I found

  My spirits in the golden age.

  For me the torrent ever pour’d

  And glisten’d — here and there alone

  The broad-limb’d Gods at random thrown

  By fountain-urns; — and Naiads oar’d

  A glimmering shoulder under gloom

  Of cavern pillars; on the swell

  The silver lily heaved and fell;

  And many a slope was rich in bloom

  From him that on the mountain lea

  By dancing rivulets fed his flocks

  To him who sat upon the rocks,

  And fluted to the morning sea.

  TO THE MASTER OF BALLIOL

  (PROFESSOR JOWETT)

  I

  Dear Master in our classic town,

  You, loved by all the younger gown

  There at Balliol,

  Lay your Plato for one minute down,

  II

  And read a Grecian tale re-told,

  Which, cast in later Grecian mould,

  Quintus Calaber

  Somewhat lazily handled of old;

  III

  And on this white midwinter day —

  For have the far-off hymns of May,

  All her melodies,

  All her harmonies echo’d away? —

  IV

  To-day, before you turn again

  To thoughts that lift the soul of men,

  Hear my cataract’s

  Downward thunder in hollow and glen,

  V

  Till, led by dream and vague desire,

  The woman, gliding toward the pyre,

  Find her warrior

  Stark and dark in his funeral fire.

  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.

  The Drive at Farringford, showing on the left the “Wellingtonia” planted by Garibaldi. From a drawing by W. Biscombe Gardner.

  TO GIFFORD PALGRAVE

  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,

  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, your Arabian sands;

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

  X

  The wealth of tropic bower and brake;

  Your Oriental Eden-isles,

  Where man, nor only Nature smiles;

  Your wonder of the boiling lake;

  XI

  Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,

  Phra-bat the step; your Pontic coast;

  Crag-cloister; Anatolian
Ghost;

  Hong-Kong, Karnac, 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 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 drear 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.

  TO W. E. GLADSTONE

  We move, the wheel must always move,

  Nor always on the plain,

  And if we move to such a goal

  As Wisdom hopes to gain,

  Then you that drive, and know your Craft,

  Will firmly hold the rein,

  Nor lend an ear to random cries,

  Or you may drive in vain,

  For some cry “Quick” and some cry “Slow,”

  But, while the hills remain,

  Up hill “Too-slow” will need the whip,

  Down hill “Too-quick,” the chain.

  TO MARY BOYLE

  (Dedicating “The Progress of Spring.”)

  I

  “Spring-flowers”! While you still delay to take

  Your leave of Town,

  Our elmtree’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, 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.

  TO W. G. WARD

  IN MEMORIAM

  Farewell, whose living like I shall not find,

  Whose Faith and Work were bells of full accord,

  My friend, the most unworldly of mankind,

  Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward,

  How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,

  How loyal in the following of thy Lord!

  TO SIR RICHARD JEBB

  Fair things are slow to fade away,

  Bear witness you, that yesterday

  From out the Ghost of Pindar in you

  Roll’d an Olympian; and they say

  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.

  TO GENERAL HAMLEY

  (Prologue of “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade.”)

  Our birches yellowing and from each

  The light leaf falling fast,

  While squirrels from our fiery beech

  Were bearing off the mast,

  You came, and look’d and loved the view

  Long-known and loved by me,

  Green Sussex fading into blue

  With one gray glimpse of sea;

  And, gazing from this height alone,

  We spoke of what had been

  Most marvellous in the wars your own

  Crimean eyes had seen;

  And now — like old-world inns that take

  Some warrior for a sign

  That therewithin a guest may make

  True cheer with honest wine —

  Because you heard the lines I read

  Nor utter’d word of blame,

  I dare without your leave to head

  These rhymings with your name,

  Who know you but as one of those

  I fain would meet again,

  Yet know you, as your England knows

  That you and all your men

  Were soldiers to her heart’s desire,

  When, in the vanish’d year,

  You saw the league-long rampart-fire

  Flare from Tel-el-Kebir

  Thro’ darkness, and the foe was driven,

  And Wolseley overthrew

  Arâbi, and the stars in heaven

  Paled, and the glory grew.

  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.

  G. F. WATTS, R.A.

  Divinely, thro’ all hindrance, finds the man

  Behind it, and so paints him that his face,

  The shape and colour of a mind and life,

  Lives for his children, ever at its best.

  TENNYSON AND BRADLEY (DEAN OF WESTMINSTER) by Margaret L. Woods

  Alum Bay, near Farringford, is now greatly changed. A big hotel stands up dwarfing its cliffs, from which the famous layers of various-coloured sand are being continually scooped into bottles, and on many a cottage mantelpiece in the island there is a glass bottle showing a picture of a lighthouse, or something else curiously wrought in Alum Bay sand. The jagged white Needles still tip the westward point of its crescent, still seeming to salute with greeting or farewell the majestic procession of great ocean-going ships, and to smile on the frolic wings of yachts, that all the summer long flirt and dance over the blue waters of the Solent, like a flight of white butterflies. Formerly the rough track to the Bay led over a lonely bit of common called the Warren, where furze grew, and short brown-tasselled rushes marked the course of a hardly visible stream. The Warren Farm lies on the landward edge of the Warren, and there on a sunny 6th of August 1855, a third birthday was being solemnized with tea and a tent. It was a blue tent on the top of a haystack, and under it between her baby boy and girl, sat a blue-eyed mother, with the bloom of youth and the freshness of the sea on her beauty. The mother and the two children, lovely, too, with more than the usual loveliness of childhood, were keeping their tiny festival with a gay simplicity, and I do not doubt that on that as on other birthdays, Edith, the birthday queen, was wearing on her golden curls a garland of rosebuds and mignonette. The wheels of a carriage were heard driving up to the farm gate, and in a minute a tall dark man, like a Spanish señor in his long cloak and sombrero, appeared under the haystack. The young woman noted the tall figure, the hat and cloak, the long, dark, clear-cut face, with the beardless and finely modelled mouth and chin, the splendid eyes under the high forehead, and the deep furrows running from nose to chin. She perceived at once it was Alfred Tennyson, whose poems she knew and loved so well. Meantime the Poet, sensitive as all artists must be to human loveliness, looked surely with delight on the pretty picture, the haystack and the blue tent, the young mother and her babes: a picture which was to form as it were a gracious frontispiece to a whole volume of friendship. He bade her “throw the little maid into his arms,” caught the child and asked her how old she was. “Three to-day,” answered little Edith proudly. “Then you and I,” said he, “have the same birthday.”