Shall pass thee, and descend in haste
Amid the sheltering bowers that lie
Far down beneath the rolling blast.
Thine awful voice, that swells on high
Above the rushing of the north,
Above the thunders of the sky,
When midnight hurricanes come forth,
Like some fall’n conqueror’s, who bewails
His laurels torn, his humbled fame,
Shall murmur to the passing gales
At once thy glory and thy shame!
EXHORTATION TO THE GREEKS.
“En illa, illa quam sape optastis, libertas! “ — SALLUST.
AROUSE thee, O Greece! and remember the day,
When the millions of Xerxes were quell’d on their way!
Arouse thee, O Greece! let the pride of thy name
Awake in thy bosom the light of thy fame!
Why hast thou shone in the temple of glory?
Why hast thou blazed in those annals of fame?
For know that the former bright page of thy story
Proclaims but thy bondage and tells but thy shame:
Proclaims from how high thou art fallen! — how low
Thou art plunged in the dark gulf of thraldom and woe!
Arouse thee, O Greece! from the weight of thy slumbers!
The chains are upon thee! — arise from thy sleep!
Remember the time, when nor nations nor numbers
Could break thy thick phalanx embodied and deep.
Old Athens and Sparta remember the morning,
When the swords of the Grecians were red to the hilt:
And, the bright gem of conquest her chaplet adorning,
Plataea rejoiced at the blood that ye spilt!
Remember the night, when, in shrièks of affright,
The fleets of the East in your ocean were sunk:
Remember each day, when, in battle array,
From the fountain of glory how largely ye drunk!
For there is not aught that a freeman can fear,
As the fetters of insult, the name of a slave;
And there is not a voice to a nation so dear,
As the war-song of freedom that calls on the brave.
KING CHARLES’S VISION.
A vision somewhat resembling the following, and prophetic of the Northern Alexander, is said to have been witnessed by Charles XI. of Sweden, the antagonist of Sigismund. The reader will exclaim, “Credat Judaeus Apella!”
KING CHARLES was sitting all alone,
In his lonely palace-tower,
When there came on his ears a heavy groan
At the silent midnight hour.
He turn’d him round where he heard the sound,
But nothing might he see;
And he only heard the nightly bird
That shriek’d right fearfully.
He tam’d him round where he heard the sound,
To his casement’s arched frame;
“And he was aware of a light that was there,”
But he wist not whence it came.
He looked forth into the night,
‘Twas calm as night might be;
But broad and bright the flashing light
Stream’d red and radiantly.
From ivory sheath his trusty brand
Of stalwart steel he drew;
And he raised the lamp in his better hand,
But its flame was dim and blue.
And he open’d the door of that palace-tower,
But harsh turn’d the jarring key:
“By the Virgin’s might,” cried the king that night,
“All is not as it should be!”
Slow turn’d the door of the crazy tower,
And slowly again did it close;
And within and without, and all about,
A sound of voices rose.
The king he stood in dreamy mood,
For the voices his name did call;
Then on he past, till he came at last
To the pillar’d audience-hall.
Eight-and-forty columns wide,
Many and carved and tall
(Four-and-twenty on each side),
Stand in that lordly hall. —
The king had been pight in the mortal fight,
And struck the deadly blow;
The king he had strode in the red red blood,
Often, afore, and now:
Yet his heart had ne’er been so harrow’d with fear
As it was this fearful hour;
For his eyes were not dry, and his hair stood on high,
And his soul had lost its power.
For a blue livid flame, round the hall where he came,
In fiery circles ran;
And sounds of death, and chattering teeth,
And gibbering tongues began.
He saw four-and-twenty statesmen old
Round a lofty table sit;
And each in his hand did a volume hold,
Wherein mighty things were writ.
In burning steel were their limbs all cased;
On their cheeks was the flush of ire:
Their armour was braced, and their helmets were laced,
And their hollow eyes darted fire.
With sceptre of might, and with gold crown bright,
And locks like the raven’s wing,
And in regal state at that board there sat
The likeness of a king.
With crimson tinged, and with ermine fringed,
And with jewels spangled o’er,
And rich as the beam of the sun on the stream,
A sparkling robe he wore.
Yet though fair shone the gem on his proud diadem,
Though his robe was jewell’d o’er,
Though brilliant the vest on his mailed breast,
Yet they all were stain’d with gore!
And his eye darted ire, and his glance shot fire,
And his look was high command;
And each, when he spoke, struck his mighty book,
And raised his shadowy hand.
And a headman stood by, with his axe on high,
And quick was his ceaseless stroke;
And loud was the shock on the echoing block,
As the steel shook the solid oak.
While short and thick came the mingled shriek
Of the wretches who died by his blow;
And fast fell each head on the pavement red,
And warm did the life-blood flow.
Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
“What fearful sights are those?”
Said the ghostly king to the earthly king,
“They are signs of future woes!”
Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
“By St. Peter, who art thou?”
Said the ghostly king to the earthly king,
“I shall be, but I am not now.”
Said the earthly king to the ghostly king,
“But when will thy time draw nigh?”
“Oh! the sixth after thee will a warrior be,
And that warrior am I.
“And the lords of the earth shall be pale at my birth,
And conquest shall hover o’er me;
And the kingdoms shall shake, and the nations shall quake,
And the thrones fall down before me.
“And Cracow shall bend to my majesty,
And the haughty Dane shall bow;
And the Pole shall fly from my piercing eye,
And the scowl of my clouded brow.
“And around my way shall the hot balls play,
And the red-tongued flames arise;
And my pathway shall be on the midnight sea,
‘Neath the frown of the wintry skies.
“Thro’ narrow pass, over dark morass,
And the waste of the weary plain,
Over ice and snow, where the dark streams flow,
Thro’ the woods of the wild Ukraine.<
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“And though sad be the close of my life and my woes,
And the hand that shall slay me unshown;
Yet in every clime, thro’ the lapse of all time,
Shall my glorious conquests be known.
“And blood shall be shed, and the earth shall be red
With the gore of misery;
And swift as this flame shall the light of my fame
O’er the world as brightly fly.”
As the monarch spoke, crew the morning cock,
When all that pageant bright,
And the glitter of gold, and the statesmen old,
Fled into the gloom of night!
TIMBUCTOO : A POEM
In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge for Timbuctoo — an impressive feat for a nineteen-year-old to accomplish. Tennyson's father had urged his son to enter, writing "You're doing nothing at the university; you might at least get the English poem prize."
The assignment was to write a poem on the subject of "Timbuctoo", a topical choice at the beginning of the European colonisation of the interior of Africa. There were legends of a great civilisation in what is modern-day Mali. Timbuctoo had been visited by a modern European for the first time in 1826, namely the Scottish explorer, A.G. Laing, who was murdered soon after.
Tennyson reworked a poem, titled Armageddon, which he had written at the age of 15 to suit the new subject requirement. Armageddon included a vision of the distant human future, in outer space, followed by a view of a lifeless earth and a final impending battle of good and evil spiritual powers. All entries were expected to be composed in heroic couplets, but Tennyson's entry was formed in Miltonic blank verse. Nevertheless, he won. Personally, Tennyson never thought much of his poem, labelling it as "a wild and unmethodised performance". He was too embarrassed to read it himself at commencement, so the previous year's winner did it for him. For the rest of his life, the poet denied any publication of Timbuctoo.
Timbuctoo
Deep in that lion-haunted island lies A mystic city, goal of enterprise. (Chapman.)
I stood upon the Mountain which o’erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall’n below th’ Atlantick, and above
The silent Heavens were blench’d with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,
Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue
Slumber’d unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
I gaz’d upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time eras’d from Earth: even as the sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.
And much I mus’d on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
Toward their brightness, ev’n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of Man
As air is th’ life of flame: and thou wert then
A center’d glory circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name
Imperial Eldorado roof’d with gold:
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.
As when in some great City where the walls
Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng’d
Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retir’d
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis.
Before the awful Genius of the place
Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
Her phantasy informs them. Where are ye
Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?
Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,
The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays
Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?
Where are the infinite ways which, Seraph-trod,
Wound thro’ your great Elysian solitudes,
Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love,
Fill’d with Divine effulgence, circumfus’d,
Flowing between the clear and polish’d stems,
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird
The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?
For nothing visible, they say, had birth
In that blest ground but it was play’d about
With its peculiar glory. Then I rais’d
My voice and cried “Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair
As those which starr’d the night o’ the Elder World?
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?”
A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! The bright descent
Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me
There on the ridge, and look’d into my face
With his unutterable, shining orbs,
So that with hasty motion I did veil
My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such colour’d spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun.
Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compass’d round about his brow
With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternation of all hues, he stood.
“O child of man, why muse you here alone
Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill’d the Earth with passing loveliness,
Which flung strange music on the howling winds,
And odours rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay:
Open thine eye and see.” I look’d, but not
Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great angel mind which look’d from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes.
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem’d to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beautitude. Each failing sense
As with a momentary flash of light
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon’s white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin’d depth
And harmony of planet-girded Suns
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bsp; And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch’d the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear.
A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts
Involving and embracing each with each
Rapid as fire, inextricably link’d,
Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riv’n rapt brain: as when in some large lake
From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm
Is ridg’d with restless and increasing spheres
Which break upon each other, each th’ effect
Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong
Than its precursor, till the eye in vain
Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise
Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round.
I know not if I shape
These things with accurate similitude
From visible objects, for but dimly now,
Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream,
The memory of that mental excellence
Comes o’er me, and it may be I entwine
The indecision of my present mind
With its past clearness, yet it seems to me
As even then the torrent of quick thought
Absorbed me from the nature of itself
With its own fleetness. Where is he that borne
Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding element?
My thoughts which long had grovell’d in the slime
Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house
Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of starlit wings which burn
Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom:
E’en so my thoughts, ere while so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength
To bear them upward through the trackless fields
Of undefin’d existence far and free.
Then first within the South methought I saw
A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 11
