The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 61

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph'd, ere my pa.s.sion sweeping thro' me left me dry, Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint, Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, [11]

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the sh.o.r.e, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish pa.s.sion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain-- [12]

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy pa.s.sions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder s.h.i.+ning Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd;-- I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit--there to wander far away, On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cl.u.s.ter, knots of Paradise. [13]

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er l.u.s.trous woodland, swings the trailer [14] from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree-- Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steams.h.i.+p, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the pa.s.sions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-s.p.a.ce; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

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

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books--

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I _know_ my words are wild, But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

_I_, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, [15]

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage--what to me were sun or clime?

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time--

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.

Let the great world spin [16] for ever down the ringing grooves [17]

of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe [18] we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. [19]

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun: Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun--[20]

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

[Footnote 1: 1842. And round the gables.]

[Footnote 2: "Gleams," it appears, is a Lincolns.h.i.+re word for the cry of the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid of a very un-Tennysonian c.u.mbrousness in the second line. But Tennyson had never, he said, heard of that meaning of "gleams," adding he wished he had. He meant nothing more in the pa.s.sage than "to express the flying gleams of light across a dreary moorland when looking at it under peculiarly dreary circ.u.mstances". See for this, 'Life', iii., 82.]

[Footnote 3: 1842 and all up to and including 1850 have a capital 'R' to robin.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. W. R. Spencer ('Poems', p. 166):--

What eye with clear account remarks The ebbing of his gla.s.s, When all its sands are diamond sparks That dazzle as they pa.s.s.

But this is of course in no way parallel to Tennyson's subtly beautiful image, which he himself p.r.o.nounced to be the best simile he had ever made.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. Guarini, 'Pastor Fido':--

Ma i colpi di due labbre innamorate Quando a ferir si va bocca con bocca, ... ove l' un alma e l'altra Corre.]

[Footnote 6: Cf. Horace's 'Annosa Cornix', Odes III., xvii., 13.]

[Footnote 7: The reference is to Dante, 'Inferno', v. 121-3:--