THE DEATH OF CENONE, AKBAR'S DREAM, AND OTHER POEMS BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON POET LAUREATE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD, 1905 All rights reserved Their oldest, and the same who firs found Paris, a naked babe, among the wo Of Ida, following lighted on him then And shouted, and the shepherds L. and came. One raised the Prince, one sleek: squalid hair, One kiss'd his hand, another closel eyes, And then, remembering the gay p mate rear'd Among them, and forgetful of the m Whose crime had half unpeopled these All that day long labour'd, hewing pines, And built their shepherd-prince a fucm pile; And, while the star of eve was draw light From the dead sun, kindled the p and all Stood round it, hush'd, or calling on 1 ced, following, as in trance, the silent cry. e waked a bird of prey that scream'd and past; e roused a snake that hissing writhed away; panther sprang across her path, she heard e shriek of some lost life among the pines, t when she gain'd the broader vale, and saw e ring of faces redden'd by the flames folding that dark body which had lain old in her embrace, paused-and then ask'd lteringly, 'Who lies on yonder pyre?' t every man was mute for reverence. en moving quickly forward till the heat note on her brow, she lifted up a voice shrill command, 'Who burns upon the pyre?' hereon their oldest and their boldest said, [e, whom thou wouldst not heal!' and all at once e morning light of happy marriage broke ro' all the clouded years of widowhood, d muffling up her comely head, and crying Tusband!' she leapt upon the funeral pile, d mixt herself with him and past in fire. A man who never changed a word with men, Fasted and pray'd, Telemachus the Saint. Eve after eve that haggard anchorite Would haunt the desolated fane, and there Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low 'Vicisti Galilæe'; louder again, Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God, Vicisti Galilæe!' but-when now Bathed in that lurid crimson-ask'd 'Is earth On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god Wroth at his fall?' and heard an answer 'Wake Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' And once a flight of shadowy fighters *Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co. |