Page images
PDF
EPUB

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying,
dying.

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with Death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
'Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.

XXVII

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer Nor, what may count itself as blest,

[blocks in formation]

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown 'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss.2

1 Goethe, says Tennyson.

The

The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.1

I hold it true, whate 'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
"T is better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

LIV

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;

* Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, died at
Vienna in 1833. The short poems written in
his memory at various times and in various
moods, Tennyson arranged and published in
the year 1850. See Eng. Lit., p. 294.
earlier poems are chiefly personal in nature;
the later treat some of the larger problems of
human life and destiny growing out of both 2 Cp. Milton's Comus, 251.
personal bereavement and the unrest produced | 3 Used poetically for "ultimate."
by the changes that were then taking place in
the realm of religious and scientific thought.

Hall, 1. 12.

Cp. Locksley

Content due to mere want of higher faculties.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, In the deep night, that all is well.
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,

If so he types this work of time

Within himself, from more to more;

Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore,

But iron dug from central gloom,

And heated hot with burning fears, And dipped in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom

To shape and use. Arise and fly

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.

CXXV

What ever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would give,
Yea, tho' there often seem'd to live
A contradiction on the tongue.

Yet Hope had never lost her youth,

She did but look through dimmer eyes; Or Love but play'd with gracious lies, Because he felt so fix'd in truth;

And if the song were full of care,

He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there;

5 periodic (in a large sense)

6 represent, properly

CXXVII

And all is well, tho' faith and form
Be sunder'd in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,

Proclaiming social truth shall spread,

And justice, even tho' thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.*

But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags!
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down,

And molten up, and roar in flood;

The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great on sinks in blood,

And compass'd by the fires of hell;

While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O'erlook'st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.

IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ†
All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the
night,

All along the valley, where thy waters flow,

There was a violent revolution in France in
1830, resulting in the overthrow of Charles X.
In 1861, Tennyson revisited this valley in the
French Pyrenees which he had visited with
Hallam in 1830.

I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years All night have the roses heard

[blocks in formation]

Walk'd in the garden with me,

The flute, violin, bassoon;

All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, "There is but one,
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;

Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.

Shadows of three dead men, and thou wast O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,

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;

For one that will never be thine?

13

26

[blocks in formation]

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the Hall;

Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of And long by the garden lake I stood,

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.

SONG FROM MAUD§

Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

For I heard your rivulet fall

From the lake to the meadow and on to the

[blocks in formation]

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.

[blocks in formation]

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of love is on high,

But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;

Beginning to faint in the light that she loves The lilies and roses were all awake,

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »