But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at In the Parliament of man, the Federation of

That which they have done but earnest of the What is that to him that reaps not harvest of Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their

9 The British have had Mother-Age, for mine I knew not, help me Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the O, well for the sailor lad,

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,

* 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 2 Cp. Milton's Comus, 251.

And every winter change to spring.

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