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IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.
[Arthur Hugh Hallam]
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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- CI.
- Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway,
- The tender blossom flutter down,
- Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
- This maple burn itself away;
- Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
- Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
- And many a rose-carnation feed
- With summer spice the humming air;
- Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
- The brook shall babble down the plain,
- At noon or when the lesser wain
- Is twisting round the polar star;
- Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
- And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
- Or into silver arrows break
- The sailing moon in creek and cove;
- Till from the garden and the wild
- A fresh association blow,
- And year by year the landscape grow
- Familiar to the stranger's child;
- As year by year the labourer tills
- His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
- And year by year our memory fades
- From all the circle of the hills.
- CII.
- We leave the well-beloved place
- Where first we gazed upon the sky;
- The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
- Will shelter one of stranger race.
- We go, but ere we go from home,
- As down the garden-walks I move,
- Two spirits of a diverse love
- Contend for loving masterdom.
- One whispers, 'Here thy boyhood sung
- Long since its matin song, and heard
- The low love-language of the bird
- In native hazels tassel-hung.'
- The other answers, 'Yea, but here
- Thy feet have stray'd in after hours
- With thy lost friend among the bowers,
- And this hath made them trebly dear.'
- These two have striven half the day,
- And each prefers his separate claim,
- Poor rivals in a losing game,
- That will not yield each other way.
- I turn to go: my feet are set
- To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
- They mix in one another's arms
- To one pure image of regret.
- CIII.
- On that last night before we went
- From out the doors where I was bred,
- I dream'd a vision of the dead,
- Which left my after-morn content.
- Methought I dwelt within a hall,
- And maidens with me: distant hills
- From hidden summits fed with rills
- A river sliding by the wall.
- The hall with harp and carol rang.
- They sang of what is wise and good
- And graceful. In the centre stood
- A statue veil'd, to which they sang;
- And which, tho' veil'd, was known to me,
- The shape of him I loved, and love
- For ever: then flew in a dove
- And brought a summons from the sea:
- And when they learnt that I must go
- They wept and wail'd, but led the way
- To where a little shallop lay
- At anchor in the flood below;
- And on by many a level mead,
- And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
- We glided winding under ranks
- Of iris, and the golden reed;
- And still as vaster grew the shore
- And roll'd the floods in grander space,
- The maidens gather'd strength and grace
- And presence, lordlier than before;
- And I myself, who sat apart
- And watch'd them, wax'd in every limb;
- I felt the thews of Anakim,
- The pulses of a Titan's heart;
- As one would sing the death of war,
- And one would chant the history
- Of that great race, which is to be,
- And one the shaping of a star;
- Until the forward-creeping tides
- Began to foam, and we to draw
- From deep to deep, to where we saw
- A great ship lift her shining sides.
- The man we loved was there on deck,
- But thrice as large as man he bent
- To greet us. Up the side I went,
- And fell in silence on his neck:
- Whereat those maidens with one mind
- Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong:
- 'We served thee here' they said, 'so long,
- And wilt thou leave us now behind?'
- So rapt I was, they could not win
- An answer from my lips, but he
- Replying, 'Enter likewise ye
- And go with us:' they enter'd in.
- And while the wind began to sweep
- A music out of sheet and shroud,
- We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
- That landlike slept along the deep.
- CIV.
- The time draws near the birth of Christ;
- The moon is hid, the night is still;
- A single church below the hill
- Is pealing, folded in the mist.
- A single peal of bells below,
- That wakens at this hour of rest
- A single murmur in the breast,
- That these are not the bells I know.
- Like strangers' voices here they sound,
- In lands where not a memory strays,
- Nor landmark breathes of other days,
- But all is new unhallow'd ground.
- CV.
- To-night ungather'd let us leave
- This laurel, let this holly stand:
- We live within the stranger's land,
- And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
- Our father's dust is left alone
- And silent under other snows:
- There in due time the woodbine blows,
- The violet comes, but we are gone.
- No more shall wayward grief abuse
- The genial hour with mask and mime;
- For change of place, like growth of time,
- Has broke the bond of dying use.
- Let cares that petty shadows cast,
- By which our lives are chiefly proved,
- A little spare the night I loved,
- And hold it solemn to the past.
- But let no footstep beat the floor,
- Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
- For who would keep an ancient form
- Thro' which the spirit breathes no more?
- Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
- Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown;
- No dance, no motion, save alone
- What lightens in the lucid east
- Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
- Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
- Run out your measured arcs, and lead
- The closing cycle rich in good.
- CVI.
- Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
- The flying cloud, the frosty light:
- The year is dying in the night;
- Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
- Ring out the old, ring in the new,
- Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
- The year is going, let him go;
- Ring out the false, ring in the true.
- Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
- For those that here we see no more;
- Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
- Ring in redress to all mankind.
- Ring out a slowly dying cause,
- And ancient forms of party strife;
- Ring in the nobler modes of life,
- With sweeter manners, purer laws.
- Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
- The faithless coldness of the times;
- Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
- But ring the fuller minstrel in.
- Ring out false pride in place and blood,
- The civic slander and the spite;
- Ring in the love of truth and right,
- Ring in the common love of good.
- Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
- Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
- Ring out the thousand wars of old,
- Ring in the thousand years of peace.
- Ring in the valiant man and free,
- The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
- Ring out the darkness of the land,
- Ring in the Christ that is to be.
- CVII.
- It is the day when he was born,
- A bitter day that early sank
- Behind a purple-frosty bank
- Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
- The time admits not flowers or leaves
- To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
- The blast of North and East, and ice
- Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,
- And bristles all the brakes and thorns
- To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
- Above the wood which grides and clangs
- Its leafless ribs and iron horns
- Together, in the drifts that pass
- To darken on the rolling brine
- That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
- Arrange the board and brim the glass;
- Bring in great logs and let them lie,
- To make a solid core of heat;
- Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
- Of all things ev'n as he were by;
- We keep the day. With festal cheer,
- With books and music, surely we
- Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
- And sing the songs he loved to hear.
- CVIII.
- I will not shut me from my kind,
- And, lest I stiffen into stone,
- I will not eat my heart alone,
- Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
- What profit lies in barren faith,
- And vacant yearning, tho' with might
- To scale the heaven's highest height,
- Or dive below the wells of Death?
- What find I in the highest place,
- But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
- And on the depths of death there swims
- The reflex of a human face.
- I'll rather take what fruit may be
- Of sorrow under human skies:
- 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
- Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
- CIX.
- Heart-affluence in discursive talk
- From household fountains never dry;
- The critic clearness of an eye,
- That saw thro' all the Muses' walk;
- Seraphic intellect and force
- To seize and throw the doubts of man;
- Impassion'd logic, which outran
- The hearer in its fiery course;
- High nature amorous of the good,
- But touch'd with no ascetic gloom;
- And passion pure in snowy bloom
- Thro' all the years of April blood;
- A love of freedom rarely felt,
- Of freedom in her regal seat
- Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
- The blind hysterics of the Celt;
- And manhood fused with female grace
- In such a sort, the child would twine
- A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine,
- And find his comfort in thy face;
- All these have been, and thee mine eyes
- Have look'd on: if they look'd in vain,
- My shame is greater who remain,
- Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
- CX.
- Thy converse drew us with delight,
- The men of rathe and riper years:
- The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
- Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
- On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
- The proud was half disarm'd of pride,
- Nor cared the serpent at thy side
- To flicker with his double tongue.
- The stern were mild when thou wert by,
- The flippant put himself to school
- And heard thee, and the brazen fool
- Was soften'd, and he knew not why;
- While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
- And felt thy triumph was as mine;
- And loved them more, that they were thine,
- The graceful tact, the Christian art;
- Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
- But mine the love that will not tire,
- And, born of love, the vague desire
- That spurs an imitative will.
- CXI.
- The churl in spirit, up or down
- Along the scale of ranks, thro' all,
- To him who grasps a golden ball,
- By blood a king, at heart a clown;
- The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil
- His want in forms for fashion's sake,
- Will let his coltish nature break
- At seasons thro' the gilded pale:
- For who can always act? but he,
- To whom a thousand memories call,
- Not being less but more than all
- The gentleness he seem'd to be,
- Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd
- Each office of the social hour
- To noble manners, as the flower
- And native growth of noble mind;
- Nor ever narrowness or spite,
- Or villain fancy fleeting by,
- Drew in the expression of an eye,
- Where God and Nature met in light;
- And thus he bore without abuse
- The grand old name of gentleman,
- Defamed by every charlatan,
- And soil'd with all ignoble use.
- CXII.
- High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
- That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
- On glorious insufficiencies,
- Set light by narrower perfectness.
- But thou, that fillest all the room
- Of all my love, art reason why
- I seem to cast a careless eye
- On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
- For what wert thou? some novel power
- Sprang up for ever at a touch,
- And hope could never hope too much,
- In watching thee from hour to hour,
- Large elements in order brought,
- And tracts of calm from tempest made,
- And world-wide fluctuation sway'd
- In vassal tides that follow'd thought.
- CXIII.
- 'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
- Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
- Which not alone had guided me,
- But served the seasons that may rise;
- For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
- In intellect, with force and skill
- To strive, to fashion, to fulfil-
- I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:
- A life in civic action warm,
- A soul on highest mission sent,
- A potent voice of Parliament,
- A pillar steadfast in the storm,
- Should licensed boldness gather force,
- Becoming, when the time has birth,
- A lever to uplift the earth
- And roll it in another course,
- With thousand shocks that come and go,
- With agonies, with energies,
- With overthrowings, and with cries,
- And undulations to and fro.
- CXIV.
- Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
- Against her beauty? May she mix
- With men and prosper! Who shall fix
- Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
- But on her forehead sits a fire:
- She sets her forward countenance
- And leaps into the future chance,
- Submitting all things to desire.
- Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain-
- She cannot fight the fear of death.
- What is she, cut from love and faith,
- But some wild Pallas from the brain
- Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
- All barriers in her onward race
- For power. Let her know her place;
- She is the second, not the first.
- A higher hand must make her mild,
- If all be not in vain; and guide
- Her footsteps, moving side by side
- With wisdom, like the younger child:
- For she is earthly of the mind,
- But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
- O, friend, who camest to thy goal
- So early, leaving me behind,
- I would the great world grew like thee,
- Who grewest not alone in power
- And knowledge, but by year and hour
- In reverence and in charity.
- CXV.
- Now fades the last long streak of snow,
- Now burgeons every maze of quick
- About the flowering squares, and thick
- By ashen roots the violets blow.
- Now rings the woodland loud and long,
- The distance takes a lovelier hue,
- And drown'd in yonder living blue
- The lark becomes a sightless song.
- Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
- The flocks are whiter down the vale,
- And milkier every milky sail
- On winding stream or distant sea;
- Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
- In yonder greening gleam, and fly
- The happy birds, that change their sky
- To build and brood; that live their lives
- From land to land; and in my breast
- Spring wakens too; and my regret
- Becomes an April violet,
- And buds and blossoms like the rest.
- CXVI.
- Is it, then, regret for buried time
- That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
- And meets the year, and gives and takes
- The colours of the crescent prime?
- Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
- The life re-orient out of dust,
- Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
- In that which made the world so fair.
- Not all regret: the face will shine
- Upon me, while I muse alone;
- And that dear voice, I once have known,
- Still speak to me of me and mine:
- Yet less of sorrow lives in me
- For days of happy commune dead;
- Less yearning for the friendship fled,
- Than some strong bond which is to be.
- CXVII.
- O days and hours, your work is this
- To hold me from my proper place,
- A little while from his embrace
- For fuller gain of after bliss:
- That out of distance might ensue
- Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
- And unto meeting when we meet,
- Delight a hundredfold accrue,
- For every grain of sand that runs,
- And every span of shade that steals,
- And every kiss of toothed wheels,
- And all the courses of the suns.
- CXVIII.
- Contemplate all this work of Time,
- The giant labouring in his youth;
- Nor dream of human love and truth,
- As dying Nature's earth and lime;
- But trust that those we call the dead
- Are breathers of an ampler day
- For ever nobler ends. They say,
- The solid earth whereon we tread
- In tracts of fluent heat began,
- And grew to seeming-random forms,
- The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
- Till at the last arose the man;
- Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
- The herald of a higher race,
- And of himself in higher place,
- If so he type this work of time
- Within himself, from more to more;
- Or, crown'd with attributes of woe
- Like glories, move his course, and show
- That life is not as idle ore,
- But iron dug from central gloom,
- And heated hot with burning fears,
- And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
- And batter'd with the shocks of doom
- To shape and use. Arise and fly
- The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
- Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die.
- CXIX.
- Doors, where my heart was used to beat
- So quickly, not as one that weeps
- I come once more; the city sleeps;
- I smell the meadow in the street;
- I hear a chirp of birds; I see
- Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
- A light-blue lane of early dawn,
- And think of early days and thee,
- And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
- And bright the friendship of thine eye;
- And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
- I take the pressure of thine hand.
- CXX.
- I trust I have not wasted breath:
- I think we are not wholly brain,
- Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
- Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
- Not only cunning casts in clay:
- Let Science prove we are, and then
- What matters Science unto men,
- At least to me? I would not stay.
- Let him, the wiser man who springs
- Hereafter, up from childhood shape
- His action like the greater ape,
- But I was born to other things.
to Verse CXXI.
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