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IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.
[Arthur Hugh Hallam]
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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- I.
- I held it truth, with him who sings
- To one clear harp in divers tones,
- That men may rise on stepping-stones
- Of their dead selves to higher things.
- But who shall so forecast the years
- And find in loss a gain to match?
- Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
- The far-off interest of tears?
- Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
- Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
- Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
- To dance with death, to beat the ground,
- Than that the victor Hours should scorn
- The long result of love, and boast,
- 'Behold the man that loved and lost,
- But all he was is overworn.'
- II.
- Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
- That name the under-lying dead,
- Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
- Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
- The seasons bring the flower again,
- And bring the firstling to the flock;
- And in the dusk of thee, the clock
- Beats out the little lives of men.
- O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
- Who changest not in any gale,
- Nor branding summer suns avail
- To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
- And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
- Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
- I seem to fail from out my blood
- And grow incorporate into thee.
- III.
- O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
- O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
- O sweet and bitter in a breath,
- What whispers from thy lying lip?
- 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run;
- A web is wov'n across the sky;
- From out waste places comes a cry,
- And murmurs from the dying sun:
- 'And all the phantom, Nature, stands-
- With all the music in her tone,
- A hollow echo of my own,-
- A hollow form with empty hands.'
- And shall I take a thing so blind,
- Embrace her as my natural good;
- Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
- Upon the threshold of the mind?
- IV.
- To Sleep I give my powers away;
- My will is bondsman to the dark;
- I sit within a helmless bark,
- And with my heart I muse and say:
- O heart, how fares it with thee now,
- That thou should'st fail from thy desire,
- Who scarcely darest to inquire,
- 'What is it makes me beat so low?'
- Something it is which thou hast lost,
- Some pleasure from thine early years.
- Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
- That grief hath shaken into frost!
- Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
- All night below the darken'd eyes;
- With morning wakes the will, and cries,
- 'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.'
- V.
- I sometimes hold it half a sin
- To put in words the grief I feel;
- For words, like Nature, half reveal
- And half conceal the Soul within.
- But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
- A use in measured language lies;
- The sad mechanic exercise,
- Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
- In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
- Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
- But that large grief which these enfold
- Is given in outline and no more.
- VI.
- One writes, that 'Other friends remain,'
- That 'Loss is common to the race'-
- And common is the commonplace,
- And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
- That loss is common would not make
- My own less bitter, rather more:
- Too common! Never morning wore
- To evening, but some heart did break.
- O father, wheresoe'er thou be,
- Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
- A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
- Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.
- O mother, praying God will save
- Thy sailor,-while thy head is bow'd,
- His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
- Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
- Ye know no more than I who wrought
- At that last hour to please him well;
- Who mused on all I had to tell,
- And something written, something thought;
- Expecting still his advent home;
- And ever met him on his way
- With wishes, thinking, 'here to-day,'
- Or 'here to-morrow will he come.'
- O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
- That sittest ranging golden hair;
- And glad to find thyself so fair,
- Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
- For now her father's chimney glows
- In expectation of a guest;
- And thinking 'this will please him best,'
- She takes a riband or a rose;
- For he will see them on to-night;
- And with the thought her colour burns;
- And, having left the glass, she turns
- Once more to set a ringlet right;
- And, even when she turn'd, the curse
- Had fallen, and her future Lord
- Was drown'd in passing thro' the ford,
- Or kill'd in falling from his horse.
- O what to her shall be the end?
- And what to me remains of good?
- To her, perpetual maidenhood,
- And unto me no second friend.
- VII.
- Dark house, by which once more I stand
- Here in the long unlovely street,
- Doors, where my heart was used to beat
- So quickly, waiting for a hand,
- A hand that can be clasp'd no more-
- Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
- And like a guilty thing I creep
- At earliest morning to the door.
- He is not here; but far away
- The noise of life begins again,
- And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
- On the bald street breaks the blank day.
- VIII.
- A happy lover who has come
- To look on her that loves him well,
- Who 'lights and rings the gateway bell,
- And learns her gone and far from home;
- He saddens, all the magic light
- Dies off at once from bower and hall,
- And all the place is dark, and all
- The chambers emptied of delight:
- So find I every pleasant spot
- In which we two were wont to meet,
- The field, the chamber and the street,
- For all is dark where thou art not.
- Yet as that other, wandering there
- In those deserted walks, may find
- A flower beat with rain and wind,
- Which once she foster'd up with care;
- So seems it in my deep regret,
- O my forsaken heart, with thee
- And this poor flower of poesy
- Which little cared for fades not yet.
- But since it pleased a vanish'd eye,
- I go to plant it on his tomb,
- That if it can it there may bloom,
- Or dying, there at least may die.
- IX.
- Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
- Sailest the placid ocean-plains
- With my lost Arthur's loved remains,
- Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er.
- So draw him home to those that mourn
- In vain; a favourable speed
- Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead
- Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn.
- All night no ruder air perplex
- Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
- As our pure love, thro' early light
- Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
- Sphere all your lights around, above;
- Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
- Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
- My friend, the brother of my love;
- My Arthur, whom I shall not see
- Till all my widow'd race be run;
- Dear as the mother to the son,
- More than my brothers are to me.
- X.
- I hear the noise about thy keel;
- I hear the bell struck in the night:
- I see the cabin-window bright;
- I see the sailor at the wheel.
- Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife,
- And travell'd men from foreign lands;
- And letters unto trembling hands;
- And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life.
- So bring him: we have idle dreams:
- This look of quiet flatters thus
- Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
- The fools of habit, sweeter seems
- To rest beneath the clover sod,
- That takes the sunshine and the rains,
- Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
- The chalice of the grapes of God;
- Than if with thee the roaring wells
- Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
- And hands so often clasp'd in mine,
- Should toss with tangle and with shells.
- XI.
- Calm is the morn without a sound,
- Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
- And only thro' the faded leaf
- The chestnut pattering to the ground:
- Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
- And on these dews that drench the furze,
- And all the silvery gossamers
- That twinkle into green and gold:
- Calm and still light on yon great plain
- That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
- And crowded farms and lessening towers,
- To mingle with the bounding main:
- Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
- These leaves that redden to the fall;
- And in my heart, if calm at all,
- If any calm, a calm despair:
- Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
- And waves that sway themselves in rest,
- And dead calm in that noble breast
- Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
- XII.
- Lo, as a dove when up she springs
- To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
- Some dolorous message knit below
- The wild pulsation of her wings;
- Like her I go; I cannot stay;
- I leave this mortal ark behind,
- A weight of nerves without a mind,
- And leave the cliffs, and haste away
- O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
- And reach the glow of southern skies,
- And see the sails at distance rise,
- And linger weeping on the marge,
- And saying; 'Comes he thus, my friend?
- Is this the end of all my care?'
- And circle moaning in the air:
- 'Is this the end? Is this the end?'
- And forward dart again, and play
- About the prow, and back return
- To where the body sits, and learn
- That I have been an hour away.
- XIII.
- Tears of the widower, when he sees
- A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
- And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
- Her place is empty, fall like these;
- Which weep a loss for ever new,
- A void where heart on heart reposed;
- And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
- Silence, till I be silent too.
- Which weeps the comrade of my choice,
- An awful thought, a life removed,
- The human-hearted man I loved,
- A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
- Come Time, and teach me, many years,
- I do not suffer in a dream;
- For now so strange do these things seem,
- Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
- My fancies time to rise on wing,
- And glance about the approaching sails,
- As tho' they brought but merchants' bales,
- And not the burthen that they bring.
- XIV.
- If one should bring me this report,
- That thou hadst touch'd the land to-day,
- And I went down unto the quay,
- And found thee lying in the port;
- And standing, muffled round with woe,
- Should see thy passengers in rank
- Come stepping lightly down the plank,
- And beckoning unto those they know;
- And if along with these should come
- The man I held as half-divine;
- Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
- And ask a thousand things of home;
- And I should tell him all my pain,
- And how my life had droop'd of late,
- And he should sorrow o'er my state
- And marvel what possess'd my brain;
- And I perceived no touch of change,
- No hint of death in all his frame,
- But found him all in all the same,
- I should not feel it to be strange.
- XV.
- To-night the winds begin to rise
- And roar from yonder dropping day:
- The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
- The rooks are blown about the skies;
- The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
- The cattle huddled on the lea;
- And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
- The sunbeam strikes along the world:
- And but for fancies, which aver
- That all thy motions gently pass
- Athwart a plane of molten glass,
- I scarce could brook the strain and stir
- That makes the barren branches loud;
- And but for fear it is not so,
- The wild unrest that lives in woe
- Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
- That rises upward always higher,
- And onward drags a labouring breast,
- And topples round the dreary west,
- A looming bastion fringed with fire.
- XVI.
- What words are these have fall'n from me?
- Can calm despair and wild unrest
- Be tenants of a single breast,
- Or sorrow such a changeling be?
- Or doth she only seem to take
- The touch of change in calm or storm;
- But knows no more of transient form
- In her deep self, than some dead lake
- That holds the shadow of a lark
- Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
- Or has the shock, so harshly given,
- Confused me like the unhappy bark
- That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
- And staggers blindly ere she sink?
- And stunn'd me from my power to think
- And all my knowledge of myself;
- And made me that delirious man
- Whose fancy fuses old and new,
- And flashes into false and true,
- And mingles all without a plan?
- XVII.
- Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
- Compell'd thy canvas, and my prayer
- Was as the whisper of an air
- To breathe thee over lonely seas.
- For I in spirit saw thee move
- Thro' circles of the bounding sky,
- Week after week: the days go by:
- Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
- Henceforth, wherever thou may'st roam,
- My blessing, like a line of light,
- Is on the waters day and night,
- And like a beacon guards thee home.
- So may whatever tempest mars
- Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
- And balmy drops in summer dark
- Slide from the bosom of the stars.
- So kind an office hath been done,
- Such precious relics brought by thee;
- The dust of him I shall not see
- Till all my widow'd race be run.
- XVIII.
- 'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand
- Where he in English earth is laid,
- And from his ashes may be made
- The violet of his native land.
- 'Tis little; but it looks in truth
- As if the quiet bones were blest
- Among familiar names to rest
- And in the places of his youth.
- Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
- That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
- And come, whatever loves to weep,
- And hear the ritual of the dead.
- Ah yet, ev'n yet, if this might be,
- I, falling on his faithful heart,
- Would breathing thro' his lips impart
- The life that almost dies in me;
- That dies not, but endures with pain,
- And slowly forms the the firmer mind,
- Treasuring the look it cannot find,
- The words that are not heard again.
- XIX.
- The Danube to the Severn gave
- The darken'd heart that beat no more;
- They laid him by the pleasant shore,
- And in the hearing of the wave.
- There twice a day the Severn fills;
- That salt sea-water passes by,
- And hushes half the babbling Wye,
- And makes a silence in the hills.
- The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
- And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
- When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
- I brim with sorrow drowning song.
- The tide flows down, the wave again
- Is vocal in its wooded walls;
- My deeper anguish also falls,
- And I can speak a little then.
- XX.
- The lesser griefs that may be said,
- That breathe a thousand tender vows,
- Are but as servants in a house
- Where lies the master newly dead;
- Who speak their feeling as it is,
- And weep the fulness from the mind:
- 'It will be hard,' they say, 'to find
- Another service such as this.'
- My lighter moods are like to these,
- That out of words a comfort win;
- But there are other griefs within,
- And tears that at their fountain freeze;
- For by the hearth the children sit
- Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
- And scarce endure to draw the breath,
- Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:
- But open converse is there none,
- So much the vital spirits sink
- To see the vacant chair, and think,
- 'How good! how kind! and he is gone.'
to Verse XXI.
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