The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, edited by J.C. Thomson.

To those unacquainted with Tennyson's conscientious methods, it may seem strange that a volume of 160 pages is necessary to contain those poems written and published by him during his active literary career, and ultimately rejected as unsatisfactory. Of this considerable body of verse, a great part was written, not in youth or old age, but while Tennyson's powers were at their greatest. Whatever reasons may once have existed for suppressing the poems that follow, the student of English literature is entitled to demand that the whole body of Tennyson's work should now be open, without restriction or impediment, to the critical study to which the works of his compeers are subjected.

The bibliographical notes prefixed to the various poems give, in every case, the date and medium of first publication.

Timbuctoo

A POEM
WHICH OBTAINED
THE CHANCELLOR'S MEDAL
AT THE
Cambridge Commencement

MDCCCXXIX

BY
A. TENNYSON

Of Trinity College

[Printed in Cambridge Chronicle and Journal of Friday, July 10, 1829, and at the University Press by James Smith, among the Prolusiones Academicæ Præmiis annuis dignatæ et in Curia Cantabrigiensi Recitatæ Comitiis Maximis, MDCCCXXIX. Republished in Cambridge Prize Poems, 1813 to 1858, by Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, without alteration; and in 1893 in the appendix to a reprint of Poems by Two Brothers].

Timbuctoo

Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies

A mystic city, goal of high Emprize.^[A]

—CHAPMAN.

I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall'n below th' Atlantick, and above
The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,
Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue
Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.
And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of Man
As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then
A center'd glory-circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name
Imperial Eldorado root'd with gold:
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.
As when in some great City where the walls
Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd
Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retir'd
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis.
Before the awful Genius of the place
Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
Her phantasy informs them.

Where are ye
Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?
Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,
The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays
Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?
Where are the infinite ways which, Seraphtrod,
Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes,
Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love,
Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd,
Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems,
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird
The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?
For nothing visible, they say, had birth
In that blest ground but it was play'd about
With its peculiar glory. Then I rais'd
My voice and cried 'Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair
As those which starr'd the night o' the Elder World?
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?'

A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! The bright descent
Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me
There on the ridge, and look'd into my face
With his unutterable, shining orbs,
So that with hasty motion I did veil
My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun.
Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compass'd round about his brow
With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternations of all hues, he stood.
'O child of man, why muse you here alone
Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling winds,
And odours rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:
Open thine eye and see.'

I look'd, but not
Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great angel mind which look'd from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem'd to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense
As with a momentary flash of light
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth
And harmony of planet-girded Suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.

A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts
Involving and embracing each with each
Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,
Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riv'n rapt brain: as when in some large lake
From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm
Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres
Which break upon each other, each th' effect
Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong
Than its precursor, till the eyes in vain
Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise
Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round.
I know not if I shape
These things with accurate similitude
From visible objects, for but dimly now,
Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream,
The memory of that mental excellence
Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine
The indecision of my present mind
With its past clearness, yet it seems to me
As even then the torrent of quick thought
Absorbed me from the nature of itself
With its own fleetness. Where is he that, borne
Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding element?
My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime
Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house
Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of starlit wings which burn
Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom:
E'en so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength
To bear them upward through the trackless fields
Of undefin'd existence far and free.

Then first within the South methought I saw
A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement
On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of Canopy o'ercanopied.
Behind,
In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones
Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth's
As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft
Upon his renown'd Eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold
Interminably high, if gold it were
Or metal more ethereal, and beneath
Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan
Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall,
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
That minister'd around it—if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.

With ministering hand he rais'd me up;
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill'd
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,
Like a swol'n river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:
'There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man: and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable;
And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
Of glory of Heaven.[B] With earliest Light of Spring,
And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,
I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood
—Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind—
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: They with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel
My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power.
I have rais'd thee higher to the Spheres of Heaven,
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
Th' illimitable years. I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth:
So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms
And cool impleachèd twilights. Child of Man,
See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o' the City, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes;
Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,
Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells:
Her obelisks of rangèd Chrysolite,
Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring
To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my City in their depths.
Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-walled, Barbarian settlement,
How chang'd from this fair City!'
Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

[The following review of 'Timbuctoo' was published in the Athenæum of 22nd July, 1829: 'We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner; for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it—namely, in a prize poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any men that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to the author, though the measure in which he writes was never before, we believe, thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration (50 lines, 62-112, quoted). How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?' At the time when this highly eulogistic notice of the youthful unknown poet appeared, the Athenæum was edited by John Sterling and Frederick Denison Maurice, its then proprietors.]

Poems Chiefly Lyrical

[The poems numbered I-XXIV which follow, were published in 1830 in the volume Poems chiefly Lyrical. (London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830.) They were never republished by Tennyson.]

The 'How' and the 'Why'

I am any man's suitor,

If any will be my tutor:

Some say this life is pleasant,

Some think it speedeth fast:

In time there is no present,

In eternity no future,

In eternity no past.

We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,

Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The bulrush nods unto his brother
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? What do they there?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;
But what is the meaning of then and now!
I feel there is something; but how and what?
I know there is somewhat; but what and why!
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.

The little bird pipeth 'why! why!'
In the summerwoods when the sun falls low,
And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,
And stares in his face and shouts 'how? how?'
And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,
And chaunts 'how? how?' the whole of the night.

Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built;
And a house with a chimney-pot?
Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why?

The Burial of Love

His eyes in eclipse,

Pale cold his lips,

The light of his hopes unfed,

Mute his tongue,

His bow unstrung

With the tears he hath shed,

Backward drooping his graceful head.

Love is dead;

His last arrow sped;

He hath not another dart;

Go—carry him to his dark deathbed;

Bury him in the cold, cold heart—

Love is dead.

Oh, truest love! art thou forlorn,

And unrevenged? Thy pleasant wiles

Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?

Shall hollow-hearted apathy,

The cruellest form of perfect scorn,

With langour of most hateful smiles,

For ever write

In the weathered light

Of the tearless eye

An epitaph that all may spy?

No! sooner she herself shall die.

For her the showers shall not fall,

Nor the round sun that shineth to all;

Her light shall into darkness change;

For her the green grass shall not spring,

Nor the rivers flow, nor the sweet birds sing,

Till Love have his full revenge.

III

To ——

Sainted Juliet! dearest name!

If to love be life alone,

Divinest Juliet,

I love thee, and live; and yet

Love unreturned is like the fragrant flame

Folding the slaughter of the sacrifice

Offered to Gods upon an altarthrone;

My heart is lighted at thine eyes,

Changed into fire, and blown about with sighs.

Song

I' the glooming light

Of middle night,

So cold and white,

Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave;

Beside her are laid,

Her mattock and spade,

For she hath half delved her own deep grave.

Alone she is there:

The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose;

Her shoulders are bare;

Her tears are mixed with the bearded dews.

Death standeth by;

She will not die;

With glazèd eye

She looks at her grave: she cannot sleep;

Ever alone

She maketh her moan:

She cannot speak; she can only weep;

For she will not hope.

The thick snow falls on her flake by flake,

The dull wave mourns down the slope,

The world will not change, and her heart will not break.

Song

Every day hath its night:

Every night its morn:

Through dark and bright

Wingèd hours are borne;

Ah! welaway!

Seasons flower and fade;

Golden calm and storm

Mingle day by day.

There is no bright form

Doth not cast a shade—

Ah! welaway!

When we laugh, and our mirth

Apes the happy vein,

We're so kin to earth

Pleasuance fathers pain—

Ah! welaway!

Madness laugheth loud:

Laughter bringeth tears:

Eyes are worn away

Till the end of fears

Cometh in the shroud,

Ah! welaway!

III

All is change, woe or weal;

Joy is sorrow's brother;

Grief and sadness steal

Symbols of each other;

Ah! welaway!

Larks in heaven's cope

Sing: the culvers mourn

All the livelong day.

Be not all forlorn;

Let us weep in hope—

Ah! welaway!

Hero to Leander

Oh go not yet, my love,

The night is dark and vast;

The white moon is hid in her heaven above,

And the waves climb high and fast.

Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again,

Lest thy kiss should be the last.

Oh kiss me ere we part;

Grow closer to my heart.

My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.

Oh joy! O bliss of blisses!

My heart of hearts art thou.

Come bathe me with thy kisses,

My eyelids and my brow.

Hark how the wild rain hisses,

And the loud sea roars below.

Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs

So gladly doth it stir;

Thine eye in drops of gladness swims.

I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh;

Thy locks are dripping balm;

Thou shalt not wander hence to-night,

I'll stay thee with my kisses.

To-night the roaring brine

Will rend thy golden tresses;

The ocean with the morrow light

Will be both blue and calm;

And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine.

No western odours wander

On the black and moaning sea,

And when thou art dead, Leander,

My soul shall follow thee!

Oh go not yet, my love,

Thy voice is sweet and low;

The deep salt wave breaks in above

Those marble steps below.

The turretstairs are wet

That lead into the sea.

Leander! go not yet.

The pleasant stars have set!

Oh! go not, go not yet,

Or I will follow thee.

VII

The Mystic

Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones:
Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye,
Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn:
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction; he hath felt
The vanities of after and before;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The stern experiences of converse lives,
The linkèd woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened, and made free.
Always there stood before him, night and day,
Of wayward vary coloured circumstance,
The imperishable presences serene,
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Fourfacèd to four corners of the sky;
And yet again, three shadows, fronting one,
One forward, one respectant, three but one;
And yet again, again and evermore,
For the two first were not, but only seemed
One shadow in the midst of a great light,
One reflex from eternity on time,
One mighty countenance of perfect calm,
Awful with most invariable eyes.
For him the silent congregated hours,
Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath
Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes
Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light
Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all
Keen knowledges of low-embowèd eld)
Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud
Which droops low hung on either gate of life,
Both birth and death; he in the centre fixed,
Saw far on each side through the grated gates
Most pale and clear and lovely distances.
He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle; he had well nigh reached
The last, with which a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black hue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

VIII

The Grasshopper

Voice of the summerwind,

Joy of the summerplain,

Life of the summerhours,

Carol clearly, bound along.

No Tithon thou as poets feign

(Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind)

But an insect lithe and strong,

Bowing the seeded summerflowers.

Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel,

Vaulting on thine airy feet.

Clap thy shielded sides and carol,

Carol clearly, chirrup sweet

Thou art a mailèd warrior in youth and strength complete;

Armed cap-a-pie,

Full fair to see;

Unknowing fear,

Undreading loss,

A gallant cavalier

Sans peur et sans reproche,

In sunlight and in shadow,

The Bayard of the meadow.

I would dwell with thee,

Merry grasshopper,

Thou art so glad and free,

And as light as air;

Thou hast no sorrow or tears,

Thou hast no compt of years,

No withered immortality,

But a short youth sunny and free.

Carol clearly, bound along,

Soon thy joy is over,

A summer of loud song,

And slumbers in the clover.

What hast thou to do with evil

In thine hour of love and revel,

In thy heat of summerpride,

Pushing the thick roots aside

Of the singing flowerèd grasses,

That brush thee with their silken tresses?

What hast thou to do with evil,

Shooting, singing, ever springing

In and out the emerald glooms,

Ever leaping, ever singing,

Lighting on the golden blooms?

Love, Pride and Forgetfulness

Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb,
Love laboured honey busily.
I was the hive and Love the bee,
My heart the honey-comb.
One very dark and chilly night
Pride came beneath and held a light.

The cruel vapours went through all,
Sweet Love was withered in his cell;
Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell
Did change them into gall;
And Memory tho' fed by Pride
Did wax so thin on gall,
Awhile she scarcely lived at all,
What marvel that she died?

The varied earth, the moving heaven,

The rapid waste of roving sea,

The fountainpregnant mountains riven

To shapes of wildest anarchy,

By secret fire and midnight storms

That wander round their windy cones,

The subtle life, the countless forms

Of living things, the wondrous tones

Of man and beast are full of strange

Astonishment and boundless change.

The day, the diamonded light,

The echo, feeble child of sound,

The heavy thunder's girding might,

The herald lightning's starry bound,

The vocal spring of bursting bloom,

The naked summer's glowing birth,

The troublous autumn's sallow gloom,

The hoarhead winter paving earth

With sheeny white, are full of strange

Astonishment and boundless change.

Each sun which from the centre flings

Grand music and redundant fire,

The burning belts, the mighty rings,

The murmurous planets' rolling choir,

The globefilled arch that, cleaving air,

Lost in its effulgence sleeps,

The lawless comets as they glare,

And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps

In wayward strength, are full of strange

Astonishment and boundless change.

Lost Hope

You cast to ground the hope which once was mine,

But did the while your harsh decree deplore,

Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine,

My heart, where Hope had been and was no more.

So on an oaken sprout

A goodly acorn grew;

But winds from heaven shook the acorn out,

And filled the cup with dew.

XII

The Tears of Heaven

Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep,
Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years,
And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.

XIII

Love and Sorrow

O maiden, fresher than the first green leaf
With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea,
Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee
That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief
Doth hold the other half in sovranty.
Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline:
Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine:
Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine
My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart,
Issue of its own substance, my heart's night
Thou canst not lighten even with thy light,
All powerful in beauty as thou art.
Almeida, if my heart were substanceless,
Then might thy rays pass thro' to the other side,
So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep
They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.

XIV

To a Lady Sleeping

O thou whose fringèd lids I gaze upon,
Through whose dim brain the wingèd dreams are born,
Unroof the shrines of clearest vision,
In honour of the silverfleckèd morn:
Long hath the white wave of the virgin light
Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.
Thou all unwittingly prolongest night,
Though long ago listening the poisèd lark,
With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene,
Over heaven's parapets the angels lean.

Sonnet

Could I outwear my present state of woe
With one brief winter, and indue i' the spring
Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow
The wan dark coil of faded suffering—
Forth in the pride of beauty issuing
A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers,
Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers
And watered vallies where the young birds sing;
Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing,
I straightly would commend the tears to creep
From my charged lids; but inwardly I weep:
Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing:
This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain
From my cold eyes and melted it again.

XVI

Sonnet

Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon,
And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl,
All night through archways of the bridgèd pearl
And portals of pure silver walks the moon.
Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony:
Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy,
And dross to gold with glorious alchemy,
Basing thy throne above the world's annoy.
Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth
That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee:
So shall thou pierce the woven glooms of truth;
So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee;
So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth,
An honourable eld shall come upon thee.

XVII

Sonnet

Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good,
Or propagate again her loathèd kind,
Thronging the cells of the diseased mind,
Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood,
Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?
Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat
Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat
Of their broad vans, and in the solitude
Of middle space confound them, and blow back
Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake
With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne!
So their wan limbs no more might come between
The moon and the moon's reflex in the night;
Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.

XVIII

Sonnet

The palid thunderstricken sigh for gain,
Down an ideal stream they ever float,
And sailing on Pactolus in a boat,
Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain
Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe
The understream. The wise could he behold
Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbèd gold
And branching silvers of the central globe,
Would marvel from so beautiful a sight
How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow:
But Hatred in a gold cave sits below,
Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light
Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips
And skins the colour from her trembling lips.

XIX

Love

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
Before the face of God didst breath and move,
Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here.
Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God:
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from his central deeps: thine empery
Is over all: thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thou goest and returnest to His Lips
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee
We beat upon our aching hearts with rage;
We cry for thee: we deem the world thy tomb.
As dwellers in lone planets look upon
The mighty disk of their majestic sun,
Hallowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom,
Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.
Come, thou of many crowns, white-robèd love,
Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee;
Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for thee:
Breathe on thy wingèd throne, and it shall move
In music and in light o'er land and sea.

III

And now—methinks I gaze upon thee now,
As on a serpent in his agonies
Awestricken Indians; what time laid low
And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he lies,
When the new year warm breathèd on the earth,
Waiting to light him with his purple skies,
Calls to him by the fountain to uprise.
Already with the pangs of a new birth
Strain the hot spheres of his convulsèd eyes,
And in his writhings awful hues begin
To wander down his sable sheeny sides,
Like light on troubled waters: from within
Anon he rusheth forth with merry din,
And in him light and joy and strength abides;
And from his brows a crown of living light
Looks through the thickstemmed woods by day and night

English War Song

Who fears to die? Who fears to die?

Is there any here who fears to die

He shall find what he fears, and none shall grieve

For the man who fears to die:

But the withering scorn of the many shall cleave

To the man who fears to die.

Chorus.—Shout for England!

Ho! for England!

George for England!

Merry England!

England for aye!

The hollow at heart shall crouch forlorn,

He shall eat the bread of common scorn;

It shall be steeped in the salt, salt tear,

Shall be steeped in his own salt tear:

Far better, far better he never were born

Than to shame merry England here.

Chorus.—Shout for England! etc.

There standeth our ancient enemy;

Hark! he shouteth—the ancient enemy!

On the ridge of the hill his banners rise;

They stream like fire in the skies;

Hold up the Lion of England on high

Till it dazzle and blind his eyes.

Chorus.—Shout for England! etc.

Come along! we alone of the earth are free;

The child in our cradles is bolder than he;

For where is the heart and strength of slaves?

Oh! where is the strength of slaves?

He is weak! we are strong; he a slave, we are free;

Come along! we will dig their graves.

Chorus.—Shout for England! etc.

There standeth our ancient enemy;

Will he dare to battle with the free?

Spur along! spur amain! charge to the fight:

Charge! charge to the fight!

Hold up the Lion of England on high!

Shout for God and our right!

Chorus.—Shout for England! etc.

XXI

National Song

There is no land like England

Where'er the light of day be;

There are no hearts like English hearts,

Such hearts of oak as they be.

There is no land like England

Where'er the light of day be;

There are no men like Englishmen,

So tall and bold as they be.

Chorus.—For the French the Pope may shrive 'em,

For the devil a whit we heed 'em,

As for the French, God speed 'em

Unto their hearts' desire,

And the merry devil drive 'em

Through the water and the fire.

Chorus.—Our glory is our freedom,

We lord it o'er the sea;

We are the sons of freedom,

We are free.

There is no land like England,

Where'er the light of day be;

There are no wives like English wives,

So fair and chaste as they be.

There is no land like England,

Where'er the light of day be,

There are no maids like English maids,

So beautiful as they be.

Chorus.—For the French, etc.

[Sixty years after first publication this Song was incorporated in 'The Foresters' (published 1892) as the opening chorus of the second act. The two verses were unaltered, but the two choruses were re-written.]

XXII

Dualisms

Two bees within a chrystal flowerbell rockèd
Hum a lovelay to the westwind at noontide.
Both alike, they buzz together,
Both alike, they hum together
Through and through the flowered heather.

Where in a creeping cove the wave unshockèd

Lays itself calm and wide,

Over a stream two birds of glancing feather

Do woo each other, carolling together.

Both alike, they glide together

Side by side;

Both alike, they sing together,

Arching blue-glossèd necks beneath the purple weather.

Two children lovelier than love, adown the lea are singing,
As they gambol, lilygarlands ever stringing:
Both in blosmwhite silk are frockèd:
Like, unlike, they roam together
Under a summervault of golden weather;
Like, unlike, they sing together
Side by side;
Mid May's darling goldenlockèd,
Summer's tanling diamondeyed.

XXIII

οἱ ρἑοντες

All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true,

All visions wild and strange;

Man is the measure of all truth

Unto himself. All truth is change:

All men do walk in sleep, and all

Have faith in that they dream:

For all things are as they seem to all,

And all things flow like a stream.

There is no rest, no calm, no pause,

Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade,

Nor essence nor eternal laws:

For nothing is, but all is made,

But if I dream that all these are,

They are to me for that I dream;

For all things are as they seem to all,

And all things flow like a stream.

Argal.—This very opinion is only true relatively to the flowing philosophers. (Tennyson's note.)

XXIV

Song

The lintwhite and the throstlecock

Have voices sweet and clear;

All in the bloomèd May.

They from the blosmy brere

Call to the fleeting year,

If that he would them hear

And stay.

Alas! that one so beautiful

Should have so dull an ear.

Fair year, fair year, thy children call,

But thou art deaf as death;

All in the bloomèd May.

When thy light perisheth

That from thee issueth,

Our life evanisheth:

Oh! stay.

Alas! that lips so cruel dumb

Should have so sweet a breath!

III

Fair year, with brows of royal love

Thou comest, as a King.

All in the bloomèd May.

Thy golden largess fling,

And longer hear us sing;

Though thou art fleet of wing,

Yet stay.

Alas! that eyes so full of light

Should be so wandering!

Thy locks are full of sunny sheen

In rings of gold yronne,^[C]

All in the bloomèd May,

We pri' thee pass not on;

If thou dost leave the sun,

Delight is with thee gone,

Oh! stay.

Thou art the fairest of thy feres,

We pri' thee pass not on.

Contributions to Periodicals 1831-32

XXV

[Published in The Gem: a Literary Annual. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]

Where is the Giant of the Sun, which stood
In the midnoon the glory of old Rhodes,
A perfect Idol, with profulgent brows
Far sheening down the purple seas to those
Who sailed from Mizraim underneath the star
Named of the Dragon—and between whose limbs
Of brassy vastness broad-blown Argosies
Drave into haven? Yet endure unscathed
Of changeful cycles the great Pyramids
Broad-based amid the fleeting sands, and sloped
Into the slumberous summer noon; but where,
Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks
Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned?
Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile?
Thy shadowy Idols in the solitudes,
Awful Memnonian countenances calm
Looking athwart the burning flats, far off
Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge
Journeying southward? Where are thy monuments
Piled by the strong and sunborn Anakim
Over their crowned brethren ΟΝ and ΟΡΕ?
Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are kissed
With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes
Flow over the Arabian bay, no more
Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn
Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile
By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone down:
The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in death
They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips,
Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots
Rock-hewn and sealed for ever.

XXVI

[Published in The Gem: a Literary Annual. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]

With roses musky breathed,
And drooping daffodilly,
And silverleaved lily,
And ivy darkly-wreathed,
I wove a crown before her,
For her I love so dearly,
A garland for Lenora.
With a silken cord I bound it.
Lenora, laughing clearly
A light and thrilling laughter,
About her forehead wound it,
And loved me ever after.

XXVII

[Published in The Gem: a Literary Annual. London: W. Marshall, Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi.]

O sad No more! O sweet No more!

O strange No more!

By a mossed brookbank on a stone

I smelt a wildweed flower alone;

There was a ringing in my ears,

And both my eyes gushed out with tears.

Surely all pleasant things had gone before,

Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee,

NO MORE!

XXVIII

[Published in the Englishman's Magazine, August, 1831. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. Reprinted in Friendship's Offering: a Literary Album for 1833. London; Smith and Elder.]

Check every outflash, every ruder sally

Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly

Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy;

This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley

Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;

But in the middle of the sombre valley

The crispèd waters whisper musically,

And all the haunted place is dark and holy.

The nightingale, with long and low preamble,

Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,

And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches

The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,

And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above—

When in this valley first I told my love.

XXIX

[Published in Friendships Offering: a Literary Album for 1832. London: Smith and Elder.]

Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh:

Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory:

Thy spirit, circled with a living glory,

In summer still a summer joy resumeth.

Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh,

Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary,

From an old garden where no flower bloometh,

One cypress on an inland promontory.

But yet my lonely spirit follows thine,

As round the rolling earth night follows day:

But yet thy lights on my horizon shine

Into my night when thou art far away;

I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright,

When we two meet there's never perfect light.

XXX

[Published in the Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832. Edited by C.F. Edgar, London: Longman and Co. Reprinted in the Athenæum, 4 May, 1867.]

There are three things that fill my heart with sighs
And steep my soul in laughter (when I view
Fair maiden forms moving like melodies),
Dimples, roselips, and eyes of any hue.

There are three things beneath the blessed skies
For which I live—black eyes, and brown and blue;
I hold them all most dear; but oh! black eyes,
I live and die, and only die for you.

Of late such eyes looked at me—while I mused
At sunset, underneath a shadowy plane
In old Bayona, nigh the Southern Sea—
From an half-open lattice looked at me.

I saw no more only those eyes—confused

And dazzled to the heart with glorious pain.

Poems, 1833

[The poems numbered XXXI-XXXIX were published in the 1832 volume (Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 94 New Bond Street. MDCCCXXXIII; published December, 1832), and were thereafter suppressed.]

XXXI

Sonnet

Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!

How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs;

I only ask to sit beside thy feet.

Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes,

Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold

My arms about thee—scarcely dare to speak.

And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,

As with one kiss to touch thy blessèd cheek.

Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control

Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat

The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,

The bare word KISS hath made my inner soul

To tremble like a lutestring, ere the note

Hath melted in the silence that it broke.

XXXII

The Hesperides

Hesperus and his daughters three

That sing about the golden tree.

—COMUS.

The Northwind fall'n, in the newstarréd night
Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
The hoary promontory of Soloë
Past Thymiaterion, in calmèd bays,
Between the Southern and the Western Horn,
Heard neither warbling of the nightingale,
Nor melody o' the Lybian lotusflute
Blown seaward from the shore; but from a slope
That ran bloombright into the Atlantic blue,
Beneath a highland leaning down a weight
Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedarshade,
Came voices, like the voices in a dream,
Continuous till he reached the other sea.

Song

The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charméd root.
Round about all is mute,
As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks,
As the sandfield at the mountain-foot.
Crocodiles in briny creeks
Sleep and stir not: all is mute.
If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
We shall lose eternal pleasure,
Worth eternal want of rest.
Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
Of the wisdom of the West.
In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three
(Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery.
For the blossom unto three-fold music bloweth;
Evermore it is born anew;
And the sap to three-fold music floweth,
From the root
Drawn in the dark,
Up to the fruit,
Creeping under the fragrant bark,
Liquid gold, honeysweet thro' and thro'.
Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily,
Looking warily
Every way,
Guard the apple night and day,
Lest one from the East come and take it away.

Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, ever and aye,
Looking under silver hair with a silver eye.
Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight;
Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die;
Honour comes with mystery;
Hoarded wisdom brings delight.
Number, tell them over and number
How many the mystic fruit-tree holds,
Lest the redcombed dragon slumber
Rolled together in purple folds.
Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol'n away,
For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
Round about the hallowed fruit tree curled—
Sing away, sing aloud and evermore in the wind, without stop,
Lest his scalèd eyelid drop,
For he is older than the world.
If he waken, we waken,
Rapidly levelling eager eyes.
If he sleep, we sleep,
Dropping the eyelid over the eyes.
If the golden apple be taken
The world will be overwise.
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Bound about the golden tree.

III

Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day,
Lest the old wound of the world be healèd,
The glory unsealèd,
The golden apple stol'n away,
And the ancient secret revealèd.
Look from west to east along:
Father, old Himla weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong.
Wandering waters unto wandering waters call;
Let them clash together, foam and fall.
Out of watchings, out of wiles,
Comes the bliss of secret smiles,
All things are not told to all,
Half round the mantling night is drawn,
Purplefringed with even and dawn.
Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn.

Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath
Of this warm seawind ripeneth,
Arching the billow in his sleep;
But the land-wind wandereth,
Broken by the highland-steep,
Two streams upon the violet deep:
For the western sun and the western star,
And the low west wind, breathing afar,
The end of day and beginning of night
Make the apple holy and bright,
Holy and bright, round and full, bright and blest,
Mellowed in a land of rest;
Watch it warily day and night;
All good things are in the west,
Till midnoon the cool east light
Is shut out by the round of the tall hillbrow;
But when the fullfaced sunset yellowly
Stays on the flowering arch of the bough,
The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly,
Goldenkernelled, goldencored,
Sunset ripened, above on the tree,
The world is wasted with fire and sword,
But the apple of gold hangs over the sea,
Five links, a golden chain, are we,
Hesper, the dragon, and sisters three,
Daughters three,
Bound about
All round about
The gnarlèd bole of the charmèd tree,
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Watch it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmèd root.

XXXIII

Rosalind

My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
Bold, subtle, careless Rosalind,
Is one of those who know no strife
Of inward woe or outward fear;
To whom the slope and stream of life,
The life before, the life behind,
In the ear, from far and near,
Chimeth musically clear.
My falconhearted Rosalind
Fullsailed before a vigorous wind,
Is one of those who cannot weep
For others' woes, but overleap
All the petty shocks and fears
That trouble life in early years,
With a flash of frolic scorn
And keen delight, that never falls
Away from freshness, self-upborne
With such gladness, as, whenever
The freshflushing springtime calls
To the flooding waters cool,
Young fishes, on an April morn,
Up and down a rapid river,
Leap the little waterfalls
That sing into the pebbled pool.
My happy falcon, Rosalind,
Hath daring fancies of her own,
Fresh as the dawn before the day,
Fresh as the early seasmell blown
Through vineyards from an inland bay.
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
Because no shadow on you falls,
Think you hearts are tennis balls
To play with, wanton Rosalind?

XXXIV

Song

Who can say
Why To-day
To-morrow will be yesterday?
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet, recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.

XXXV

Sonnet

Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar

The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold.

Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold;

Break through your iron shackles—fling them far.

O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar

Grew to this strength among his deserts cold;

When even to Moscow's cupolas were rolled

The growing murmurs of the Polish war!

Now must your noble anger blaze out more

Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,

The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before—

Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan,

Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore

Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.

XXXVI

O Darling Room ^[D]

O darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright
Wherein to read, wherein to write.

For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene.

III

Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.

XXXVII

To Christopher North

You did late review my lays,

Crusty Christopher;

You did mingle blame and praise,

Rusty Christopher.

When I learnt from whom it came,

I forgave you all the blame,

Musty Christopher;

I could not forgive the praise,

Fusty Christopher.

[This epigram was Tennyson's reply to an article by Professor Wilson—'Christopher North'—in Blackwood's Magazine for May 1832, dealing in sensible fashion with Tennyson's 1830 volume, and ridiculing the fulsome praise lavished on him by his inconsiderate friends—especially referring to Arthur Hallam's article in the Englishman's Magazine for August, 1831.]

XXXVIII

[These forty lines formed the conclusion to the original (1833) version of the poem. When the poem was reprinted in the 1842 volumes these lines were suppressed.]

We have had enough of motion,
Weariness and wild alarm,
Tossing on the tossing ocean,
Where the tuskèd seahorse walloweth
In a stripe of grassgreen calm,
At noon-tide beneath the lea;
And the monstrous narwhale swalloweth
His foamfountains in the sea.
Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
This is lovelier and sweeter,
Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater!
We will eat the Lotos, sweet
As the yellow honeycomb,
In the valley some, and some
On the ancient heights divine;
And no more roam,
On the loud hoar foam,
To the melancholy home
At the limit of the brine,
The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.
We'll lift no more the shattered oar,
No more unfurl the straining sail;
With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale
We will abide in the golden vale
Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail;
We will not wander more.
Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat
On the solitary steeps,
And the merry lizard leaps,
And the foam-white waters pour;
And the dark pine weeps,
And the lithe vine creeps,
And the heavy melon sleeps
On the level of the shore:
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will not wander more,
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the ocean, and rowing with the oar,
Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we will return no more.

XXXIX

[In the 1833 volume the poem opened with the following four verses, suppressed after 1842. These Fitz Gerald considered made 'a perfect poem by themselves.']

As when a man, that sails in a balloon,

Downlooking sees the solid shining ground

Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon,

Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound:

And takes his flags and waves them to the mob

That shout below, all faces turned to where

Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe,

Filled with a finer air:

So, lifted high, the poet at his will

Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all,

Higher thro' secret splendours mounting still,

Self-poised, nor fears to fall.

Hearing apart the echoes of his fame.

While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory,

Sowed my deep-furrowed thought with many a name

Whose glory will not die.

Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals
1833-1868

[This poem is written in pencil on the fly-leaf of a copy of Poems 1833 in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington Museum. Reprinted with many alterations in Life, vol. I, p. 67.]

Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges,

Your portals statued with old kings and queens,

Your bridges and your busted libraries,

Wax-lighted chapels and rich carved screens,

Your doctors and your proctors and your deans

Shall not avail you when the day-beam sports

New-risen o'er awakened Albion—No,

Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow

Melodious thunders through your vacant courts

At morn and even; for your manner sorts

Not with this age, nor with the thoughts that roll,

Because the words of little children preach

Against you,—ye that did profess to teach

And have taught nothing, feeding on the soul.

XLI

[There was published in 1837 in The Tribute, (a collection of original poems by various authors, edited by Lord Northampton), a contribution by Tennyson entitled 'Stanzas,' consisting of xvi stanzas of varying lengths (110 lines in all). In 1855 the first xii stanzas were published as the fourth section of the second part of 'Maud.' Some verbal changes and transpositions of lines were made; a new stanza (the present sixth) and several new lines were introduced, and the xth stanza of 1837 became the xiiith of 1855. But stanzas xiii-xvi of 1837 have never been reprinted in any edition of Tennyson's works, though quoted in whole or part in various critical studies of the poet. Swinburne refers to this poem as 'the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written, even by Mr Tennyson.' This poem in The Tribute gained Tennyson his first notice in the Edinburgh Review, which had till then ignored him.]

XIII

But she tarries in her place

And I paint the beauteous face

Of the maiden, that I lost,

In my inner eyes again,

Lest my heart be overborne,

By the thing I hold in scorn,

By a dull mechanic ghost

And a juggle of the brain.

XIV

I can shadow forth my bride

As I knew her fair and kind

r for my wife;

She is lovely by my side

In the silence of my life—

'Tis a phantom of the mind.

'Tis a phantom fair and good

I can call it to my side,

So to guard my life from ill,

Tho' its ghastly sister glide

And be moved around me still

With the moving of the blood

That is moved not of the will.

XVI

Let it pass, the dreary brow,

Let the dismal face go by,

Will it lead me to the grave?

Then I lose it: it will fly:

Can it overlast the nerves?

Can it overlive the eye?

But the other, like a star,

Thro' the channel windeth far

Till it fade and fail and die,

To its Archetype that waits

Clad in light by golden gates,

Clad in light the Spirit waits

To embrace me in the sky.

XLII

[On the fly-leaf of a book illustrated by Bewick, in the library of the late Lord Ravensworth, the following lines in Tennyson's autograph were discovered in 1903.]

A gate and a field half ploughed,
A solitary cow,
A child with a broken slate,
And a titmarsh in the bough.
But where, alack, is Bewick
To tell the meaning now?

XLIII

[This poem, published in the second volume of Poems by Alfred Tennyson (in two volumes, London, Edward Moxon, MDCCCXLII), was reprinted in every edition until 1851, when it was suppressed.]

Sure never yet was Antelope

Could skip so lightly by.

Stand off, or else my skipping-rope

Will hit you in the eye.

How lightly whirls the skipping-rope!

How fairy-like you fly!

Go, get you gone, you muse and mope—

I hate that silly sigh.

Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,

Or tell me how to die.

There, take it, take my skipping-rope

And hang yourself thereby.

XLIV

[From Punch, February 28, 1846. Bulwer Lytton published in 1845 his satirical poem 'New Timon: a Romance of London,' in which he bitterly attacked Tennyson for the civil list pension granted the previous year, particularly referring to the poem 'O Darling Room' in the 1833 volume. Tennyson replied in the following vigorous verses, which made the literary sensation of the year. Tennyson afterwards declared: 'I never sent my lines to Punch. John Forster did. They were too bitter. I do not think that I should ever have published them.'—Life, vol. I, p. 245.]

We know him, out of Shakespeare's art,

And those fine curses which he spoke;

The old Timon, with his noble heart,

That, strongly loathing, greatly broke.

So died the Old: here comes the New:

Regard him: a familiar face:

I thought we knew him: What, it's you

The padded man—that wears the stays—

Who killed the girls and thrill'd the boys

With dandy pathos when you wrote,

A Lion, you, that made a noise,

And shook a mane en papillotes.

And once you tried the Muses too:

You fail'd, Sir: therefore now you turn,

You fall on those who are to you

As captain is to subaltern.

But men of long enduring hopes,

And careless what this hour may bring,

Can pardon little would-be Popes

And Brummels, when they try to sting.

An artist, Sir, should rest in art,

And wave a little of his claim;

To have the deep poetic heart

Is more than all poetic fame.

But you, Sir, you are hard to please;

You never look but half content:

Nor like a gentleman at ease

With moral breadth of temperament.

And what with spites and what with fears,

You cannot let a body be:

It's always ringing in your ears,

'They call this man as good as me.'

What profits now to understand

The merits of a spotless shirt—

A dapper boot—a little hand—

If half the little soul is dirt?

You talk of tinsel! why we see

The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks.

You prate of nature! you are he

That spilt his life about the cliques.

A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame:

It looks too arrogant a jest—

The fierce old man—to take his name

You bandbox. Off, and let him rest.

XLV

[Published in Manchester Athænaum Album, 1850. Written, 1837. Republished, altered, in Life, vol. I, p. 161.]

How often, when a child I lay reclined,

I took delight in this locality!

Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,

And here the Grecian ships did seem to be.

And here again I come and only find

The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea,—

Gray sand banks and pale sunsets—dreary wind,

Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy clouded sea.

XLVI

[Published in The Keepsake for 1851: an illustrated annual, edited by Miss Power. London: David Bogue. To this issue of the Keepsake Tennyson also contributed 'Come not when I am dead' now included in the collected Works.]

What time I wasted youthful hours
One of the shining wingèd powers,
Show'd me vast cliffs with crown of towers,

As towards the gracious light I bow'd,
They seem'd high palaces and proud,
Hid now and then with sliding cloud.

He said, 'The labour is not small;
Yet winds the pathway free to all:—
Take care thou dost not fear to fall!'

XLVII

[Published in The Examiner, January 31, 1852. Verses 1 (considerably altered), 7, 8 and 10, are reprinted in Life, vol. I, p. 344.]

Rise, Britons, rise, if manhood be not dead;

The world's last tempest darkens overhead;

The Pope has bless'd him;

The Church caress'd him;

He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone:

Britons, guard your own.

His ruthless host is bought with plunder'd gold,

By lying priest's the peasant's votes controlled.

All freedom vanish'd,

The true men banished,

He triumphs; maybe, we shall stand alone.

Britons, guard your own.

Peace-lovers we—sweet Peace we all desire—

Peace-lovers we—but who can trust a liar?—

Peace-lovers, haters

Of shameless traitors,

We hate not France, but this man's heart of stone.

Britons, guard your own.

We hate not France, but France has lost her voice

This man is France, the man they call her choice.

By tricks and spying,

By craft and lying,

And murder was her freedom overthrown.

Britons, guard your own.

'Vive l'Empereur' may follow by and bye;

'God save the Queen' is here a truer cry.

God save the Nation,

The toleration,

And the free speech that makes a Briton known.

Britons, guard your own.

Rome's dearest daughter now is captive France,

The Jesuit laughs, and reckoning on his chance,

Would, unrelenting,

Kill all dissenting,

Till we were left to fight for truth alone.

Britons, guard your own.

Call home your ships across Biscayan tides,

To blow the battle from their oaken sides.

Why waste they yonder

Their idle thunder?

Why stay they there to guard a foreign throne?

Seamen, guard your own.

We were the best of marksmen long ago,

We won old battles with our strength, the bow.

Now practise, yeomen,

Like those bowmen,

Till your balls fly as their true shafts have flown.

Yeomen, guard your own.

His soldier-ridden Highness might incline

To take Sardinia, Belgium, or the Rhine:

Shall we stand idle,

Nor seek to bridle

His vile aggressions, till we stand alone?

Make their cause your own.

Should he land here, and for one hour prevail,

There must no man go back to bear the tale:

No man to bear it—

Swear it! We swear it!

Although we fought the banded world alone,

We swear to guard our own.

XLVIII

[Published in The Examiner, February 7, 1852. Reprinted, slightly altered, in Life, vol. I, p. 345. Included, almost entirely re-written, in collected Works.]

First drink a health, this solemn night,

A health to England, every guest;

That man's the best cosmopolite

Who loves his native country best.

May Freedom's oak for ever live

With stronger life from day to day;

That man's the best Conservative

Who lops the mouldered branch away.

Hands all round!

God the tyrant's hope confound!

To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round.

A health to Europe's honest men!

Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails!

From wronged Poerio's noisome den,

From iron limbs and tortured nails!

We curse the crimes of Southern kings,

The Russian whips and Austrian rods—

We likewise have our evil things;

Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods.

Yet hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To Europe's better health we drink, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round.

What health to France, if France be she

Whom martial progress only charms?

Yet tell her—better to be free

Than vanquish all the world in arms.

Her frantic city's flashing heats

But fire, to blast the hopes of men.

Why change the titles of your streets?

You fools, you'll want them all again.

Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round.

Gigantic daughter of the West,

We drink to thee across the flood,

We know thee most, we love thee best,

For art thou not of British blood?

Should war's mad blast again be blown,

Permit not thou the tyrant powers

To fight thy mother here alone,

But let thy broadsides roar with ours.

Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round.

O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,

When war against our freedom springs!

O speak to Europe through your guns!

They can be understood by kings.

You must not mix our Queen with those

That wish to keep their people fools;

Our freedom's foemen are her foes,

She comprehends the race she rules.

Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,

And the great name of England round and round.

XLIX

[Published in The Examiner, February 14, 1852, and never reprinted nor acknowledged. The proof sheets of the poem, with alterations in Tennyson's autograph, were offered for public sale in 1906.]

SIR,—I have read with much interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good: yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some of the feelings of our time, perhaps you may be induced to admit it.

How much I love this writer's manly style!

By such men led, our press had ever been

The public conscience of our noble isle,

Severe and quick to feel a civic sin,

To raise the people and chastise the times

With such a heat as lives in great creative rhymes.

O you, the Press! what good from you might spring!

What power is yours to blast a cause or bless!

I fear for you, as for some youthful king,

Lest you go wrong from power in excess.

Take heed of your wide privileges! we

The thinking men of England, loathe a tyranny.

A freeman is, I doubt not, freest here;

The single voice may speak his mind aloud;

An honest isolation need not fear

The Court, the Church, the Parliament, the crowd.

No, nor the Press! and look you well to that—

We must not dread in you the nameless autocrat.

And you, dark Senate of the public pen,

You may not, like yon tyrant, deal in spies.

Yours are the public acts of public men,

But yours are not their household privacies.

I grant you one of the great Powers on earth,

But be not you the blatant traitors of the hearth.

You hide the hand that writes: it must be so,

For better so you fight for public ends;

But some you strike can scarce return the blow;

You should be all the nobler, O my friends.

Be noble, you! nor work with faction's tools

To charm a lower sphere of fulminating fools.

But knowing all your power to heat or cool,

To soothe a civic wound or keep it raw,

Be loyal, if you wish for wholesome rule:

Our ancient boast is this—we reverence law.

We still were loyal in our wildest fights,

Or loyally disloyal battled for our rights.

O Grief and Shame if while I preach of laws

Whereby to guard our Freedom from offence—

And trust an ancient manhood and the cause

Of England and her health of commonsense—

There hang within the heavens a dark disgrace,

Some vast Assyrian doom to burst upon our race.

I feel the thousand cankers of our State,

I fain would shake their triple-folded ease,

The hogs who can believe in nothing great,

Sneering bedridden in the down of Peace

Over their scrips and shares, their meats and wine,

With stony smirks at all things human and divine!

I honour much, I say, this man's appeal.

We drag so deep in our commercial mire,

We move so far from greatness, that I feel

Exception to be character'd in fire.

Who looks for Godlike greatness here shall see

The British Goddess, sleek Respectability.

Alas for her and all her small delights!

She feels not how the social frame is rack'd.

She loves a little scandal which excites;

A little feeling is a want of tact.

For her there lie in wait millions of foes,

And yet the 'not too much' is all the rule she knows.

Poor soul! behold her: what decorous calm!

She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed,

Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm

With decent dippings at the name of Christ!

And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long,

She hardly can believe that she shall suffer wrong.

Alas, our Church! alas, her growing ills,

And those who tolerate not her tolerance,

But needs must sell the burthen of their wills

To that half-pagan harlot kept by France!

Free subjects of the kindliest of all thrones,

Headlong they plunge their doubts among old rags and bones.

Alas, Church writers, altercating tribes—

The vessel and your Church may sink in storms.

Christ cried: Woe, woe, to Pharisees and Scribes!

Like them, you bicker less for truth than forms.

I sorrow when I read the things you write,

What unheroic pertness! what un-Christian spite!

Alas, our youth, so clever yet so small,

Thin dilletanti deep in nature's plan,

Who make the emphatic One, by whom is all,

An essence less concentred than a man!

Better wild Mahmoud's war-cry once again!

O fools, we want a manlike God and Godlike men!

Go, frightful omens. Yet once more I turn

To you that mould men's thoughts; I call on you

To make opinion warlike, lest we learn

A sharper lesson than we ever knew.

I hear a thunder though the skies are fair,

But shrill you, loud and long, the warning-note:</

THE SUPPRESSED POEMS

OF

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

1830-1868

EDITED BY J.C. THOMSON

Timbuctoo

Poems Chiefly Lyrical

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

Contributions to Periodicals 1831-32

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

Poems, 1833

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

XXXIX

Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals 1833-1868

XL

XLI

XLII

XLIII

XLIV

XLV

XLVI

XLVII

XLVIII

XLIX

Miscellaneous Poems and Contributions to Periodicals
1833-1868