Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson

“ Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep 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; And many a darkness into the light shall leap, And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, And noble thought be freer under the sun, 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. ”

“ But mine, but mine,' so I sware to the rose, 'For ever and ever, mine.' 6. And the soul of the rose went into my blood, As the music clash'd in the hall; And long by the garden lake I stood. For I heard your rivulet fall From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; 7. From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes, To the woody hollows in which we meet And the valleys of Paradise. 8. The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree ”

“ 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. Not once or twice in our fair island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory: He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands, Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevail'd, Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled Are close upon the shining table-lands To which our God Himself is moon and sun. ”

“ Rivulet, born at the Hall, My Maud has sent it by thee (If I read her sweet will right) On a blushing mission to me, Saying in odour and colour, 'Ah, be Among the roses to-night.' XXII. 1. Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown. 2. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves. ”

“ And my heart is a handful of dust, And the wheels go over my head, And my bones are shaken with pain, For into a shallow grave they are thrust, Only a yard beneath the street, And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat, The hoofs of the horses beat, Beat into my scalp and my brain, With never an end to the stream of passing feet, Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying, Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter, And here beneath it is all as bad, For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so; To have no peace in the grave, is that not sad? ”

“ Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways, 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. 10. And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill. Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. ”

“ That old man never comes to his place: Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen? For only once, in the village street, Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, A gray old wolf and a lean. Scarcely, now, would I call him a cheat; For then, perhaps, as a child of deceit, She might by a true descent be untrue; And Maud is as true as Maud is sweet: Tho' I fancy her sweetness only due To the sweeter blood by the other side; Her mother has been a thing complete, However she came to be so allied. ”

“ And fair without, faithful within, Maud to him is nothing akin: Some peculiar mystic grace Made her only the child of her mother, And heap'd the whole inherited sin On that huge scapegoat of the race, All, all upon the brother. 4. Peace, angry spirit, and let him be! Has not his sister smiled on me? XIV. 1. Maud has a garden of roses And lilies fair on a lawn: There she walks in her state And tends upon bed and bower And thither I climb'd at dawn And stood by her garden-gate; A lion ramps at the top, He is claspt by a passion-flower. ”

“ Think I may hold dominion sweet, Lord of the pulse that is lord of her breast, And dream of her beauty with tender dread, From the delicate Arab arch of her feet To the grace that, bright and light as the crest Of a peacock, sits on her shining head, And she knows it not: O, if she knew it, To know her beauty might half undo it. I know it the one bright thing to save My yet young life in the wilds of Time, Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime, Perhaps from a selfish grave. ”

“ Perhaps the smile and tender tone Came out of her pitying womanhood, For am I not, am I not, here alone So many a summer since she died, My mother, who was so gentle and good? Living alone in an empty house, Here half-hid in the gleaming wood, Where I hear the dead at midday moan, And the shrieking rush of the wainscot mouse, And my own sad name in corners cried, When the shiver of dancing leaves is thrown About its echoing chambers wide, Till a morbid hate and horror have grown Of a world in which I have hardly mixt, And a morbid eating lichen fixt On a heart half-turn'd to stone. ”

“ He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, Who seems a promontory of rock, That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, In middle ocean meets the surging shock, Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd. 2. But ill for him who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still! ”

“ O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul Of Europe, keep our noble England whole, And save the one true seed of freedom sown Betwixt a people and their ancient throne, That sober freedom out of which there springs Our loyal passion for our temperate kings; For, saving that, ye help to save mankind Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, And drill the raw world for the march of mind, Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just. ”

“ Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie? 15. Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek, Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave— Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave. ”

“ MAUD I. 1. I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath, The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.' 2. For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, His who had given me life—O father! O God! ”

“ Breton, not Briton; here Like a shipwreck'd man on a coast Of ancient fable and fear— Plagued with a flitting to and fro, A disease, a hard mechanic ghost That never came from on high Nor ever arose from below, But only moves with the moving eye, Flying along the land and the main— Why should it look like Maud? Am I to be overawed By what I cannot but know Is a juggle born of the brain? 6. Back from the Breton coast, Sick of a nameless fear, Back to the dark sea-line Looking, thinking of all I have lost; An old song vexes my ear; But that of Lamech is mine. ”

“ The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door Of his house in a rainbow frill? Did he push, when he was uncurl'd, A golden foot or a fairy horn Thro' his dim water-world? 4. Slight, to be crush' d with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand, Small, but a work divine, Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on the Breton strand! ”

“ But I know where a garden grows, Fairer than aught in the world beside, All made up of the lily and rose That blow by night, when the season is good, To the sound of dancing music and flutes: It is only flowers, they had no fruits, And I almost fear they are not roses, but blood; For the keeper was one, so full of pride, He linkt a dead man there to a spectral bride; For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes, Would he have that hole in his side? 9. But what will the old man say? He laid a cruel snare in a pit To catch a friend of mine one stormy day ”

“ Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall, Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes, Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all,— 19. What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse. No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone. Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse. I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil may pipe to his own. ”

“ For groves of pine on either hand, To break the blast of winter, stand; And further on, the hoary Channel Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand; Where, if below the milky steep Some ship of battle slowly creep, And on thro' zones of light and shadow Glimmer away to the lonely deep, We might discuss the Northern sin Which made a selfish war begin; Dispute the claims, arrange the chances; Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win: Or whether war's avenging rod Shall lash all Europe into blood; Till you should turn to dearer matters, Dear to the man that is dear to God ”

“ Down too, down at your own fireside, With the evil tongue and the evil ear, For each is at war with mankind. 4. I wish I could hear again The chivalrous battle-song That she warbled alone in her joy! I might persuade myself then She would not do herself this great wrong To take a wanton dissolute boy For a man and leader of men. 5. Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by, One still strong man in a blatant land, Whatever they call him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat—one Who can rule and dare not lie. ”

“ And it was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, The, glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionnaire: No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase, Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore, And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more. ”

“ Ah, what shall I be at fifty Should Nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five? Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seem'd, And her smile were all that I dream'd, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet. ”

“ Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow Thro' either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe; Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was our English Duke; Whatever record leap to light He never shall be shamed. ”

“ What if tho' her eye seem'd full Of a kind intent to me, What if that dandy-despot, he, That jewell'd mass of millinery, That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull Smelling of musk and of insolence, Her brother, from whom I keep aloof, Who wants the finer politic sense To mask, tho' but in his own behoof, With a glassy smile his brutal scorn— What if he had told her yestermorn How prettily for his own sweet sake A face of tenderness might be feign'd, And a moist mirage in desert eyes, That so, when the rotten hustings shake In another month to his brazen lies, A wretched vote may be gain'd. ”

“ I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the moor; But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face. O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud; Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor. 4. I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal; I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way: For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is gone; and the heavens fall in a gentle rain, When they should burst and drown with deluging storms The feeble vassals of wine and anger and lust, The little hearts that know not how to forgive: Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold Thee just, Strike dead the whole weak race of venomous worms, That sting each other here in the dust; We are not worthy to live. II. 1. See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design! ”