The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 82

Hark how the wild rain hisses, And the loud sea roars below.

Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs So gladly doth it stir; Thine eye in drops of gladness swims.

I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh; Thy locks are dripping balm; Thou shalt not wander hence to-night, I'll stay thee with my kisses.

To-night the roaring brine Will rend thy golden tresses; The ocean with the morrow light Will be both blue and calm; And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine.

No western odours wander On the black and moaning sea, And when thou art dead, Leander, My soul must follow thee!

Oh go not yet, my love Thy voice is sweet and low; The deep salt wave breaks in above Those marble steps below.

The turretstairs are wet That lead into the sea.

Leander! go not yet.

The pleasant stars have set: Oh! go not, go not yet, Or I will follow thee.

THE MYSTIC

Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones: Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye, Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn; Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, The still serene abstraction; he hath felt The vanities of after and before; Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart The stern experiences of converse lives, The linked woes of many a fiery change Had purified, and chastened, and made free.

Always there stood before him, night and day, Of wayward vary colored circ.u.mstance, The imperishable presences serene Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound, Dim shadows but unwaning presences Fourfaced to four corners of the sky; And yet again, three shadows, fronting one, One forward, one respectant, three but one; And yet again, again and evermore, For the two first were not, but only seemed, One shadow in the midst of a great light, One reflex from eternity on time, One mighty countenance of perfect calm, Awful with most invariable eyes.

For him the silent congregated hours, Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath Severe and youthful brows, with s.h.i.+ning eyes Smiling a G.o.dlike smile (the innocent light Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld) Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud Which droops low hung on either gate of life, Both birth and death; he in the centre fixt, Saw far on each side through the grated gates Most pale and clear and lovely distances.

He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom.

How could ye know him? Ye were yet within The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached The last, with which a region of white flame, Pure without heat, into a larger air Upburning, and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

THE GRa.s.sHOPPER

I

Voice of the summerwind, Joy of the summerplain, Life of the summerhours, Carol clearly, bound along.

No t.i.thon thou as poets feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers.

Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet.

Clap thy s.h.i.+elded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet.

Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete; Armed cap-a-pie, Full fair to see; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier 'Sans peur et sans reproche,'

In sunlight and in shadow, The Bayard of the meadow.

II

I would dwell with thee, Merry gra.s.shopper, Thou art so glad and free, And as light as air; Thou hast no sorrow or tears, Thou hast no compt of years, No withered immortality, But a short youth sunny and free.

Carol clearly, bound along, Soon thy joy is over, A summer of loud song, And slumbers in the clover.

What hast thou to do with evil In thine hour of love and revel, In thy heat of summerpride, Pus.h.i.+ng the thick roots aside Of the singing flowered gra.s.ses, That brush thee with their silken tresses?

What hast thou to do with evil, Shooting, singing, ever springing In and out the emerald glooms, Ever leaping, ever singing, Lighting on the golden blooms?

LOVE, PRIDE AND FORGETFULNESS

Ere yet my heart was sweet Love's tomb, Love laboured honey busily.

I was the hive and Love the bee, My heart the honey-comb.

One very dark and chilly night Pride came beneath and held a light.

The cruel vapours went through all, Sweet Love was withered in his cell; Pride took Love's sweets, and by a spell, Did change them into gall; And Memory tho' fed by Pride Did wax so thin on gall, Awhile she scarcely lived at all, What marvel that she died?

CHORUS

In an unpublished drama written very early.

The varied earth, the moving heaven, The rapid waste of roving sea, The fountainpregnant mountains riven To shapes of wildest anarchy, By secret fire and midnight storms That wander round their windy cones, The subtle life, the countless forms Of living things, the wondrous tones Of man and beast are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change.

The day, the diamonded light, The echo, feeble child of sound, The heavy thunder's griding might, The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom, The naked summer's glowing birth, The troublous autumn's sallow gloom, The h.o.a.rhead winter paving earth With sheeny white, are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change.

Each sun which from the centre flings Grand music and redundant fire, The burning belts, the mighty rings, The murmurous planets' rolling choir, The globefilled arch that, cleaving air, Lost in its effulgence sleeps, The lawless comets as they glare, And thunder thro' the sapphire deeps In wayward strength, are full of strange Astonishment and boundless change.

LOST HOPE

You cast to ground the hope which once was mine, But did the while your harsh decree deplore, Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine, My heart, where Hope had been and was no more.

So on an oaken sprout A goodly acorn grew; But winds from heaven shook the acorn out, And filled the cup with dew.

THE TEARS OF HEAVEN

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 selfwrought evils of unnumbered years, And doth the fruit of her dishonour 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.