Victorian Poetry

C/ - he turns, in this exquisito posiy from the associations of the home with his friend to those with his own childhood regret of Leaving ALFRED LORD TENNYSON Somersby

A treble darkness, Evil haunts

The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants

Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey

By each cold hearth, and sadness flings Her shadow on the blaze of kings: And yet myself have heard him say,

That not in any mother town

With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown

Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With sport and song, in booth and tent,

Imperial halls, or open plain;

Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
To left and right thro' meadowy curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;

But each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a kindlier day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,

I think once more he seems to die.

Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,

The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away; brilliant colors.
fad nig
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;

And wheels the circled dance, and breaks Unloved, by many a sandy bar,

The rocket molten into flakes Of crimson or in emerald rain. 99

2nd anniversary XCIX depth

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro' thy darkling red
On yon swoll'n brook that bubbles fast,
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;

Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;

Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.

O wheresoever those may be,

hids

the pa

Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
c. 100

I climb the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill,
Nor quarry trench'd along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;

day is ba

C. in leaving the old home, he seems to love his friend.

The brook shall babble down the plain, At noon or when the lesser wain or Ursa minor Is twisting round the polar star; forms. the apparent of the courte.

apis

Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break

The sailing moon in creek and cove;

Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger's child;

doesn't.

As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or Tops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.

CII (02

We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.

We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.

One whispers, 'Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.'

The other answers, 'Yea, but here

Thy feet have stray'd in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.'
These two have striven half the day,

And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.

but the memones recalled are not poignant, but tender && cious.

moul

CIV=CVI. With these rections begins the tile Part Xmastide & New year in the new home. The poet in away from the past & his private grief, & looks to future & his hopes for mankind.

I turn to go: my feet are set

VICTORIAN POETRY

To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret.

CIII (03

On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream'd a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,

And maidens with me: distant hills
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.

The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil'd, to which they sang;
And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:

And when they learnt that I must go,
They wept and wail'd, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;

And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;

And still as vaster grew the shore,

And roll'd the floods in grander space, The maidens gather'd strength and grace And presence, lordlier than before;

And I myself, who sat apart

And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan's heart;

As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;

Until the forward-creeping tides

Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:

Whereat those maidens with one mind.

Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong: 'We served thee here,' they said, 'so long, And wilt thou leave us now behind?'

So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, 'Enter likewise ye
And go with us:' they enter'd in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer'd her toward a crimson d
That landlike slept along the deep.
104

CIV zadXmas
The time draws near the birth of C
The moon is hid, the night is still
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,

That wakens at this hour of rest A single murmur in the breast, That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers' voices here they sou

In lands where not a memory stra Nor landmark breathes of other da But all is new unhallow'd ground.

105 To-night ungather'd let us leave

This laurel, let this holly stand: We live within the stranger's land And strangely falls our Christmas-ev Our father's dust is left alone

And silent under other snows: There in due time the woodbine bl The violet comes, but we are gone. No more shall wayward grief abuse The genial hour with mask and mi For change of place, like growth of Has broke the bond of dying use. Let cares that petty shadows cast, By which our lives are chiefly pro A little spare the night I loved, And hold it solemn to the past. But let no footstep beat the floor,

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm; For who would keep an ancient for Thro' which the spirit breathes no m Be neither song, nor game, nor feast Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute bet No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens in the lucid east Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the see Run out your measured arcs, and 1 The closing cycle rich in good.

+tte Part
The poet turns
& looks to the

could not win my lips, but he ikewise ye they enter'd in.

I began to sweep meet and shroud, vard a crimson cloud along the deep. 104 CIV gad Xmas

r the birth of Christ; the night is still; elow the hill

the mist.

Is below,

mis hour of rest in the breast, ne bells I know.

5 here they sound, a memory strays, thes of other days, low'd ground.

0105

et us leave

holly stand: stranger's land, ir Christmas-eve.

eft alone her snows:

he woodbine blows. we are gone.

rd grief abuse 1 mask and mime; like growth of time i dying use.

hadows cast, re chiefly proved, ht I loved, the past.

t the floor, nantle warm; in ancient form reathes no more?

ne, nor feast; 1or flute be blown save alone cid east

ider wood. r in the seed; I arcs, and lead

good.

4,06

the wild sky, rosty light: e night;

let him die.

CVI- New Greve - the mood of the last poem is

continued & heightened: the bells sound wild & fub as the the closing cycle were already bieginenin o the past husnd from the grid that saps the in joulure of man to hopes for ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of

war & mollism

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Chrish

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand)
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

CVIII /08

I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
What profit lies in barren faith,

And vacant yearning, tho' with might
To scale the heaven's highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death?
What find I in the highest place,

But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face.

I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.

CIX 109

Heart-affluence in discursive talk

From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro' all the Muses' walk;
Seraphic intellect and force

To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion'd logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;

symbolic of all realy represHigh nature amorous of the good,

107

Cation

It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.

The time admits not flowers or leaves

To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,
And bristles all the brakes and thorns

To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast.
wine,

But fetch the

Arrange the board and brim the glass;

Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev'n as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.

But touch'd with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro' all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,

Of freedom in her regal seat

Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look'd on: if they look'd in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.

CX 110

Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,

The proud was half disarm'd of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.

The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften'd, and he knew not why;

In this section, the powers that work for good expecially those which unite men; and so the fait

CIX-CXIV. In his search for windows, the fruit of sorrow, he turns to contemplate the character of his fr The poems attempt to describe the character of his fre in whom he finds qualities mont required to meet dany520 of political & scientific progress, as in Epilog

secan it

a type of

While I, thy nearest, sat apart,

And felt thy triumph was as mine; And loved them more, that they were The graceful tact, the Christian art;

thine,

Nor mine the sweetness or the skill, But mine the love that will not tire, And, born of love, the vague desire That spurs an imitative will.

CXI

The churl in spirit, up or down

Along the scale of ranks, thro' all, To him who grasps a golden ball, By blood a king, at heart a clown; The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil His want in forms for fashion's sake, Will let his coltish nature break At seasons thro' the gilded pale: For who can always act? but he,

To whom a thousand memories call,
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem'd to be,
Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,

Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
And thus he bore without abuse

The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil'd with all ignoble use.
CXII 112

High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
For what wert thou? some novel power
Sprang up for ever at a touch,

And hope could never hope too much, In watching thee from hour to hour, Large elements in order brought,

And tracts of calm from tempest made, And world-wide fluctuation sway'd In vassal tides that follow'd thought.

CXIII

113

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons that may rise;

For can I doubt, who knew thee kee In intellect, with force and skill To strive, to fashion, to fulfil —

I doubt not what thou wouldst have

A life in civic action warm,

A soul on highest mission sent,
A potent voice of Parliament,
A pillar steadfast in the storm,
Should licensed boldness gather for
Becoming, when the time has birth,
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it in another course,

With thousand shocks that come an
With agonies, with energies,
With overthrowings, and with crie
And undulations to and fro.

CXIV [14

Who loves not Knowledge? Who sha Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall Her pillars? Let her work prevail. But on her forehead sits a fire:

She sets her forward countenance And leaps into the future chance, Submitting all things to desire.

Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain

She cannot fight the fear of death. What is she, cut from love and fa But some wild Pallas from the brain Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst

All barriers in her onward race For power. Let her know her pla She is the second, not the first. A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child: For she is earthly of the mind,

But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. O, friend, who camest to thy goal So early, leaving me behind,

I would the great world grew like th Who grewest not alone in power

And knowledge, but by year and ho

In reverence and in charity.

115 CXV

レ Now fades the last long streak of sno Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares, and thi By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and lon The distance takes a lovelier hue, And drown'd in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song.

the fruit of ter of his friend q his friend "to meet the 5 in Epiloga

knew thee keen orce and skill

On, to fulfil

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its a fire:

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uture chance,
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om the brain

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know her place;
ie first.

ke her mild, nd guide side by side unger child:

: mind,

of the soul. o thy goal nd,

grew like thee, in power year and hour y.

reak of snow, ze of quick res, and thick blow.

ud and long, lier hue, iving blue

s song.

CXV-Spring comes once more,
and with the beauty of the mored

his

CXVIII- Do not believe soné is like mere mutt been produced, like lou

regret also awaves blousoned in the earlier ages of the

ALFRED LORD

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

white

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly sea
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

CXVI 6

Is it, then, regret for buried time

greey

That keenlier in sweet April wakes, And meets the year, and gives and takes The colours of the crescent prime?

Not all the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.

Not all regret: the face will shine

Upon me, while I muse alone; And that dear voice, I once have known, Still speak to me of me and mine: Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be.

CXVII // 7

O days and hours, your work is this,
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace,
For fuller gain of after bliss:
That out of distance might ensue

Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundred fold accrue,
For every grain of sand that runs,

And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII 1/8

Contemplate all this work of Time

The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature's earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread In tracts of fluent heat began,

And grew to seeming-random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man;

only to perish. He is a best to advance to somet TENNYSON on the earth & also in some higher place ens

Who throve and branch'd from clime t clime,

The herald of a higher race,

And of himself in higher place to the If so he type 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,

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he repeats the process of evolution by sunduring the love willen haar to the users the fl

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