God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrëan Rings to the roar of an angel on set Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods Whisper in odorous heights of even. Hendecasyllabics. O you chorus of indolent reviewers, Lest I fall unawares before the people, Thro' this metrification of Catullus, They should speak to me not without a welcome, All that chorus of indolent reviewers. Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble, So fantastical is the dainty metre. Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers. most Horticultural art, or half coquette-like Maiden not to be greeted unbenignly. ADDITIONAL POEMS. NOTE. The Poems which follow include all those which have been omitted by the author from his latest revised editions, or never acknowledged by him. They are here printed, because, although unsanctioned by Mr. Tennyson, they have recently been collected from various sources, and printed in America. But had their being in the heart of man As air is th' life of flame : and thou wert then A centred glory-circled memory, All on-set of capricious accident, would not die. Heaven? For nothing visible, they say, had birth A Poem which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at In that blest ground, but it was played the Cambridge Commencement, MDCCCXXIX. By A. TENNYSON, of Trinity College. about With its peculiar glory. Then I raised | The indistinctest atom in deep air, My voice and cried, "Wide Afric, doth The Moon's white cities, and the opal width thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair As those which starred the night o' the elder world? Or is the rumor of thy Timbuctoo A rustling of white wings! the bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and looked into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs, Such colored spots as dance athwart the Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud, Blaze within blaze, an unimagined depth Arched 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 linked, Expanding momently with every sight And sound which struck the palpitating sense, The issue of strong impulse, hurried through The riven rapt brain; as when in some large lake From pressure of descendent crags, which lapse Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope At slender interval, the level calm Is ridged 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 eye 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 grovelled 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 With growth of shadowing leaf and clus- |To carry through the world those waves, ters 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 impeachéd twilights. Child of man, Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave, Forth issuing from the 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 rangéd chrysolite, Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by, And gulfs himself in sands, as not enduring which bore POEMS PUBLISHED IN THE EDITION OF 1830, AND OMITTED IN LATER EDITIONS. ELEGIACS. LOW-FLOWING breezes are roaming the broad valley dimmed in the gloaming: Thro' the black-stemmed pines only the far river shines. Creeping through blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes, Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall. Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly; Deeply the turtle cooes; shrilly the owlet halloos ; Winds creep: dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly: Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn. Sadly the far kine loweth : the glimmering water outfloweth : Twin peaks shadowed with pine slope to the dark hyaline. Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad Throbbing in wild unrest holds him beneath in her breast. |