The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 77

"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue; Set thy h.o.a.ry fancies free; What is loathsome to the young Savours well to thee and me.

"Change, reverting to the years, When thy nerves could understand What there is in loving tears, And the warmth of hand in hand.

"Tell me tales of thy first love-- April hopes, the fools of chance; Till the graves begin to move, And the dead begin to dance.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup: All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again.

"Trooping from their mouldy dens The chap-fallen circle spreads: Welcome, fellow-citizens, Hollow hearts and empty heads!

"You are bones, and what of that?

Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modell'd on a skull.

"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!

Tread a measure on the stones, Madam--if I know your s.e.x, From the fas.h.i.+on of your bones.

"No, I cannot praise the fire In your eye--nor yet your lip: All the more do I admire Joints of cunning workmans.h.i.+p.

"Lo! G.o.d's likeness--the ground-plan-- Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed: Buss me thou rough sketch of man, Far too naked to be shamed!

"Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance, While we keep a little breath!

Drink to heavy Ignorance!

Hob-and-n.o.b with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long, And the longer night is near: What! I am not all as wrong As a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all, When the locks are crisp and curl'd; Unto me my maudlin gall And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!

Mingle madness, mingle scorn!

Dregs of life, and lees of man: Yet we will not die forlorn."

5

The voice grew faint: there came a further change: Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range: Below were men and horses pierced with worms, And slowly quickening into lower forms; By shards and scurf of salt, and sc.u.m of dross, Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss, Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time".

[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame".

And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour".

At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"

To which an answer peal'd from that high land.

But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn G.o.d made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]

[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous pa.s.sage in the 'Phoedrus' where Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds.]

Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Sh.e.l.ley's 'Triumph of Life':--

The wild dance maddens in the van; and those ...

Mix with each other in tempestuous measure To savage music, wilder as it grows.

They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure, Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun ...

Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.

As their feet twinkle, etc.]

[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line.]

[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--

Every _minute_ dies a man, Every _minute_ one is born.

Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--

"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows:--

Every moment dies a man, And one and a sixteenth is born.

I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre."]

[Footnote 5: 1842 and 1843. The tyrant's.]

[Footnote 6: 1842. Said.]

[Footnote 7: In the Selection published in 1865 Tennyson here inserted a couplet which he afterwards omitted:--

Another answer'd: "But a crime of sense!"

"Give him new nerves with old experience."]

[Footnote 8: In Professor Tyndall's reminiscences of Tennyson, inserted in Tennyson's 'Life', he says he once asked him for some explanation of this line, and the poet's reply was:

"The power of explaining such concentrated expressions of the imagination was very different from that of writing them".

And on another occasion he said very happily:

"Poetry is like shot silk with many glancing colours. Every reader must find his own interpretation, according to his ability, and according to his sympathy with the poet".

Poetry in its essential forms always suggests infinitely more than it expresses, and at once inspires and kindles the intelligence which is to comprehend it; if that intelligence, which is perhaps only another name for sympathy, does not exist, then, in Byron's happy sarcasm:--

"The gentle readers wax unkind, And, not so studious for the poet's ease, Insist on knowing what he 'means', a hard And hapless situation for a bard".

Possibly Tennyson may have had in his mind Keats's line:--

"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven"]