Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The splendor 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; answers, 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,

Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder’d Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.

For when my passion first began,
Ere that, which in me burn’d,
The love, that makes me thrice a man,
Could hope itself return’d;

To yonder oak within the field
I spoke without restraint,-
And with a larger faith

Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
In darkness weeps as all ashamed to weep,
Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
With self-wrought evil of unnumbered years,
And doth the fruit of her dishonor reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
Smiles on the earth’s worn brow to win her if she may.

My Lords, we heard you speak: you told us all
That England’s honest censure went too far,
That our free press should cease to brawl,
Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war.
It was our ancient privilege, my Lords,
To fling whate’er we felt, not fearing, into words.

We love not this French God, the child of hell,
Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise;
But though we love kind Peace so well,
We dare not

‘Summer is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,’
Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
‘New, new, new, new’! Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?

‘Love again, song again, nest again, young again,’
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See,

Ralph would fight in Edith’s sight,
For Ralph was Edith’s lover,
Ralph went down like a fire to the fight,
Struck to the left and struck to the right,
Roll’d them over and over.
‘Gallant Sir Ralph,’ said the king.

Casques were crack’d and hauberks hack’d,
Lances snapt in sunder,
Rang the stroke, and sprang the blood,
Knights were thwack’d and riven, and hew’d
Like broad oaks with thunder.
‘O what an arm,’ said the king.

Edith bow’d her stately head,
Saw

A still small voice spake unto me,
‘Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?’

Then to the still small voice I said;
‘Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.’

To which the voice did urge reply;
‘To-day I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.

‘An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire

I.
A plague upon the people fell,
A famine after laid them low;
Then thorpe and byre arose in fire,
For on them brake the sudden foe;
So thick they died the people cried,
‘The Gods are moved against the land.’
The Priest in horror about his altar
To Thor and Odin lifted a hand:
‘Help us from famine
And plague and strife!
What would you have of us?
Human life?
Were it our nearest,
Were it our dearest,–
Answer, O answer!–
We give you

I.
’Ouse-keeper sent tha my lass, fur New Squire coom’d last night.
Butter an’ heggs—yis—yis. I’ll goä wi’ tha back: all right;
Butter I warrants be prime, an’ I warrants the heggs be as well,
Hafe a pint o’ milk runs out when ya breäks the shell.

II.
Sit thysen down fur a bit: hev a glass o’ cowslip wine!
I liked the owd Squire an’ ’is gells as thaw they was gells o’ mine,
Fur then

I.
I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips–
As when the sun,

I.

The voice and the Peak
Far over summit and lawn,
The lone glow and long roar
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn!

II.

All night have I heard the voice
Rave over the rocky bar,
But thou wert silent in heaven,
Above thee glided the star.

III.

Hast thou no voice, O Peak,
That standest high above all?
‘I am the voice of the Peak,
I roar and rave, for I fall.

IV.

‘A thousand voices go
To North, South, East, and West;
They

I.
We left behind the painted buoy
That tosses at the harbor-mouth;
And madly danced our hearts with joy,
As fast we fleeted to the South:
How fresh was every sight and sound
On open main or winding shore!
We knew the merry world was round,
And we might sail for evermore.

II.
Warm broke the breeze against the brow,
Dry sang the tackle, sang the sail:
The Lady’s-head upon the prow
Caught the shrill salt, and sheer’d the gale.
The broad seas

I.
I WAS the chief of the race—he had stricken my father dead—
But I gather’d my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look’d like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,
And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the light as the bravest hero of song,
And each of them liefer had died

Soft, shadowy moon-beam! by the light
Sleeps the wide meer serenely pale:
How various are the sounds of night,
Borne on the scarely-rising gale!

The swell of distant brook is heard,
Whose far-off waters faintly roll;
And piping of the shrill small bird,
Arrested by the wand’ring owl.

Come hither! let us thread with care
The maze of this green path, which binds
The beauties of the broad parterre,
And thro’ yon fragrant alley winds.

Or on this old bench

The gleam of household sunshine ends,
And here no longer can I rest;
Farewell! -You will not speak, my friends,
Unfriendly of your parted guest.
–
O well for him that finds a friend,
Or makes a friend where’er he come,
And loves the world from end to end,
And wanders on from home to home!
–
O happy he, and fit to live,
On whom a happy home has power
To make him trust his life, and give
His fealty to

ON THE HILL.

The lights and shadows fly!
Yonder it brightens and darkens down on the plain.
A jewel, a jewel dear to a lover’s eye!
Oh is it the brook, or a pool, or her window pane,
When the winds are up in the morning?

Clouds that are racing above,
And winds and lights and shadows that cannot be still,
All running on one way to the home of my love,
You are all running on, and

I.
Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong’d to the church of old,
I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold,
I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves,
My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves,
My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name,
I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro’ both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
The meanings ambush’d under all they saw,
The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice,
What omens may foreshadow fate to man
And woman, and the secret of the Gods.
My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer,
Are slower to forgive

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a

Golden-hair’d Ally whose name is one with mine,
Crazy with laughter and babble and earth’s new wine,
Now that the flower of a year and a half is thine,
O little blossom, O mine, and mine of mine,
Glorious poet who never hast written a line,
Laugh, for the name at the head of my verse is thine.
May’st thou never be wrong’d by the name that is mine!

King, that hast reign’d six hundred years, and grown
In power, and ever growest, since thine own
Fair Florence honouring thy nativity,
Thy Florence now the crown of Italy,
Hath sought the tribute of a verse from me,
I, wearing but the garland of a day,
Cast at thy feet one flower that fades away.
-To Dante by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his

Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneïan pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,

Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:

And trust me while I turn’d the page,
And track’d you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.

For me the torrent ever pour’d
And glisten’d–here and

Two Suns of Love make day of human life,
Which else with all its pains, and griefs, and deaths,
Were utter darkness–one, the Sun of dawn
That brightens thro’ the Mother’s tender eyes,
And warms the child’s awakening world–and one
The later-rising Sun of spousal Love,
Which from her household orbit draws the child
To move in other spheres. The Mother weeps
At that white funeral of the single life,
Her maiden daughter’s marriage; and her tears
Are half

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made,
Or else I had not dared to flow
In these words toward you, and invade
Even with a verse your holy woe.

’Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost:
Those we love first are