Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there markets overflow. rain'd a ghastly dew

I have but an angry fancy; what is that which From the nations' airy navies grappling in I should do? the central blue;

I had been content to perish, falling on the Far along the world-wide whisper of the southfoeman's ground, wind rushing warm, When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the With the standards of the peoples plunging winds are laid with sound.

Yearning for the large excitement that the
coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his
father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near
and nearer drawn,

Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,

Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

120

thro' the thunder-storm;

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple

bears a laden breast,

Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding In the steamship, in the railway, in the on the bugle-horn,

They to whom my foolish passion were a target

for their scorn.

thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space;

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a I will take some savage woman, she shall rear moulder'd string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved

so slight a thing.

my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew 'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their

pleasure, woman's pain

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain.

150

lances in the sun;

170

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, Not with blinded eyesight poring over mis

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing.s But I count the gray barbarian lower than the

Or to burst all links of habit-there to wander I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files

On from island unto island at the gateways of I that rather held it better men should perish

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward,

Never comes the trader, never floats

Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the trailer from the crag;

the younger day;

Droops the heavy-blossom 'd bower, hangs the Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of heavy-fruited tree

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the O, well for the sailor lad, lightnings, weigh the sun. That he sings in his boat on the bay!

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath And the stately ships go on

not set.

To their haven under the hill;

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, my fancy yet. And the sound of a voice that is still!

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Break, break, break,

Locksley Hall!

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

SONGS FROM THE PRINCESS
SWEET AND Low

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, Low, low, breathe and blow,

or fire or snow;

Wind of the western sea!

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, Over the rolling waters go,

and I go.

A FAREWELL

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver;

No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet, then a river;
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder-tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK*

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

These lines were written in memory of Arthur Hallam, and might well have been included among the poems of In Memoriam had they not been cast in a different metre.

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me:

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon;

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

THE SPLENDOUR FALLS†

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying,
dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river;

† This song was inspired by the echoes at the Lakes of Killarney.

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 him1 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 long3 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;
"T is 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.

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 So runs my dream; but what am I?
the year 1850. See Eng. Lit., p. 294. The
earlier poems are chiefly personal in nature;
An infant crying in the night;
the later treat some of the larger problems of

human life and destiny growing out of both 2 Cp. Milton's Comus, 251.

personal bereavement and the unrest produced 3 Used poetically for "ultimate." Gp. Locksley by the changes that were then taking place in

Hall, 1. 12.

the realm of religious and scientific thought. 4 Content due to mere want of higher faculties.