Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“ My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of year
When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs,
And the shining daffodil dies, and the Charioteer
And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion’s grave low down in the west, 350
That like a silent lightning under the stars
She seem’d to divide in a dream from a band of the blest,
And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars—
“And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have rest,
Knowing I tarry for thee,” and pointed to Mars, 355
As he glow’d like a ruddy shield on the Lion’s breast. ”

“ Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow. ”

“ For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so;
To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad?
But up and down and to and fro, 255
Ever about me the dead men go;
And then to hear a dead man chatter
Is enough to drive one mad.
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Wretchedest age, since Time began,
They cannot even bury a man; 260
And tho’ we paid our tithes in the days that are gone,
Not a bell was rung, not a prayer was read;
It is that which makes us loud in the world of the dead;
There is none that does his work, not one ”

“ Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die. Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine; A life that all the Muses deck'd
With gifts of grace, that might express
All-comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect: And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved. ”

“ And Victor he must ever be.
For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill
And break the shore, and evermore
Make and break, and work their will;
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,
And other forms of life than ours,
What know we greater than the soul?
On God and Godlike men we build our trust.
Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:
The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:
The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears ”

“ Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.
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Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age—why not? I have neither hope nor trust; 30
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust.
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Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,
When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex, like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ”

“ If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape,
And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.
==XXXVI== Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors. ”

“ Then might thy rays pass through to the other side,
So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide,
But lose themselves in utter emptiness.
Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep;
They never learned to love who never knew to weep. ”

“ The path of duty was the way to glory:
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses. ”

“ Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways, 150
Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,
Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;
From the long-neck’d geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,
Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies. ”

“ The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl’d into folly and vice. 140
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice.
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For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil. ”

“ Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just. ”

“ O fall'n at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!
Such was he whom we deplore.
The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.
The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more. ”

“ That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue, For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
==CXVIII== Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. ”

“ And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the peace, that I deem’d no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. 395
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Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind
It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill ”

“ Peace in her vineyard—yes!—but a company forges the wine.
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And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian’s head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 40
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And Sleep must lie down arm’d, for the villainous center-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights,
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits
To pestle a poison’d poison behind his crimson lights. ”

“ Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
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.'
==II== Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. ”

“ We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God. O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
==LXXIV== As sometimes in a dead man's face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out--to some one of his race: I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old. ”

“ Walk’d in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found 100
The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.
IV
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A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit—ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, 105
Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?
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Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small! ”

“ But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
==CXXIV== That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess,-- I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye,
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun. ”

“ Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone? ”

“ 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:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
==LV== The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life ”

“ And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!
Tho’ many a light shall darken, and many shall weep 385
For those that are crush’d in the clash of jarring claims,
Yet God’s just wrath shall be wreak’d on a giant liar ”

“ I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.
==LII== I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought. ”

“ Ready in heart and ready in hand, 170
March with banner and bugle and fife
To the death, for their native land.
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Maud with her exquisite face,
And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky,
And feet like sunny gems on an English green, 175
Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,
And myself so languid and base.
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Silence, beautiful voice! ”

“ Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before, But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. ”

“ Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws. ”