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

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

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

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

Sad as the last which reddens over one

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

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer
dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering

square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

FROM IN MEMORIAM*

I

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years

And find in loss a gain to match? Or reach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears?

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

1 Goethe, says Tennyson.

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

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

XXVII

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest. 4

I hold it true, whate 'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

LIV

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

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

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

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

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

Behold, we know not anything;

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

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

Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, died at Vienna in 1833. The short poems written in his memory at various times and in various moods, Tennyson arranged and published in the year 1850. See Eng. Lit., p. 294. The earlier poems are chiefly personal in nature; the later treat some of the larger problems of human life and destiny growing out of both personal bereavement and the unrest produced 3 Used poetically for "ultimate." Cp. Locksley by the changes that were then taking place in the realm of religious and scientific thought. 4 Content due to mere want of higher faculties.

2 Cp. Milton's Comus, 251.
Hall, 1. 12.

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

If so he types this work of time

Within himself, from more to more;

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

But iron dug from central gloom,

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

To shape and use. Arise and fly

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

CXXV

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

Yet Hope had never lost her youth,

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

And if the song were full of care,

He breathed the spirit of the song;

And if the words were sweet and strong He set his royal signet there;

5 periodic (in a large sense)

6 represent, properly

CXXVII

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

Proclaiming social truth shall spread,

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

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

And molten up, and roar in flood;

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

And compass'd by the fires of hell;

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

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

All along the valley, where thy waters flow,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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