Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series
Page 12
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement
On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of Canopy o’ercanopied.
Behind,
In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones
Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth’s
As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft
Upon his narrow’d Eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillar’d front of burnish’d gold
Interminably high, if gold it were
Or metal more ethereal, and beneath
Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan
Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall,
Part of a throne of fiery flame, where from
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
That minister’d around it if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Stagger’d beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.
With ministering hand he rais’d me up;
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill’d
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,
Like a swol’n river’s gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:
“There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man: and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable;
And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
Of glory of Heaven. 1 With earliest Light of Spring,
And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,
I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood
Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: They with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel
My fullness; I have fill’d thy lips with power.
I have rais’d thee nigher to the Spheres of Heaven,
Man’s first, last home: and thou with ravish’d sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
Th’illimitable years. I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th’ intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth:
So that men’s hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms
And cool impleached twilights. Child of Man,
See’st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o’ the City, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes.
Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,
Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells.
Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite,
Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring
To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my City in their depths.
Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais’d
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-wall’d, Barbarian settlement,
How chang’d from this fair City!”
Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!
POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL
Tennyson published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. Claribel and Mariana, which are now considered as being among Tennyson’s most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Many of the poems contain experimental elements such as irregular metres and words employed for their musical or evocative powers rather than for their precise literal meanings. The collection also includes the introspective “The Owl” and “The Kraken” Although censured by some critics as overly sentimental, Tennyson’s verse soon attracted the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Mariana follows a common theme in much of Tennyson's work, depicting the subject of despondent isolation. Mariana is portrayed as continuously lamenting her lack of interaction with society. Her isolation defines her existence and her longing for a connection leaves her wishing for death at the end of every stanza. The concept of Mariana originates in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, but the lover of Tennyson's Mariana does not return at the end of the poem. Instead, she is utterly abandoned, desiring her death even more. The poem was well-received by critics, being described as one of Tennyson's skill at poetry.
The original title page
Mariana by John Everett Millais, 1851
CONTENTS
Claribel: A Melody
Lilian
Isabel
The ‘How’ and the ‘Why’
Elegiacs
Mariana
O —— : Clear-headed friend...
Madeline
The Merman
The Mermaid
Supposed Confessions
The Burial of Love
To ——
Song The Owl
Second Song To the Same
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
Ode to Memory
Song “I’the glooming light...”
Song: A Spirit haunts the year’s last hours
Adeline
A Character
Song “The lintwhite and the throstlecock...”
Song “Every day hath its night...”
The Poet
The Poet’s Mind
Nothing Will Die
All Things Will Die
Hero to Leander
The Mystic
The Dying Swan
A Dirge
The Grasshopper
Love, Pride and Forgetfulness
Chorus: “The varied earth...”
Lost Hope
The Deserted House
The Tears of Heaven
Love and Sorrow
To a Lady Sleeping
Sonnet “Could I outwear my present state of woe...”
Sonnet “Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon...”
Sonnet “Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good...”
Sonnet “The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain...”
Love
The Kraken
The Ballad of Oriana
Circumstance
English War Song
National Song
The Sleeping Beauty
Dualisms
We are Free
The Sea Fairies
Sonnet to J. M. K.
Claribel: A Melody
Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.
At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss’d headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling runnel crispeth,
The hollow grot replieth
Where Claribel low-lieth.
Lilian
I
Airy, Fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She ‘ll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.
II
When my passion seeks
Pleasance in love-sighs,
She, looking thro’ and thro’ me
Thoroughly to undo me,
Smiling, never speaks:
So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple,
From beneath her gathered wimple
Glancing with black-bearded eyes,
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The baby-roses in her cheeks;
Then away she flies.
III
Prythee weep, May Lilian!
Gaiety without eclipse
Whearieth me, May Lilian;
Thro’ my every heart it thrilleth
When from crimson-threaded lips
Silver-treble laughter trilleth:
Prythee weep, May Lilian!
IV
Praying all I can,
If prayers will not hush thee,
Airy Lilian,
Like a rose-leaf I will crush thee,
Fairy Lilian.
Isabel
I
Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity,
Clear, without heat, undying, tended by
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane
Of her still spirit [1]; locks not wide-dispread,
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity,
Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood,
Revered Isabel, the crown and head,
The stately flower of female fortitude,
Of perfect wifehood and pure lowlihead. [2]
II
The intuitive decision of a bright
And thorough-edged intellect to part
Error from crime; a prudence to withhold;
The laws of marriage [3] character’d in gold
Upon the blanched [4] tablets of her heart;
A love still burning upward, giving light
To read those laws; an accent very low
In blandishment, but a most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress,
Right to the heart and brain, tho’ undescried,
Winning its way with extreme gentleness
Thro’ [5] all the outworks of suspicious pride.
A courage to endure and to obey;
A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway,
Crown’d Isabel, thro’ [6] all her placid life,
The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.
III
The mellow’d reflex of a winter moon;
A clear stream flowing with a muddy one,
Till in its onward current it absorbs
With swifter movement and in purer light
The vexed eddies of its wayward brother:
A leaning and upbearing parasite,
Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite,
With cluster’d flower-bells and ambrosial orbs
Of rich fruit-bunches leaning on each other —
Shadow forth thee: — the world hath not another
(Though all her fairest forms are types of thee,
And thou of God in thy great charity)
Of such a finish’d chasten’d purity.
The ‘How’ and the ‘Why’
I am any man’s suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast:
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the how and the why?
The bulrush nods unto his brother
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? What do they there?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rocks stand still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the how and the why?
The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow;
But what is the meaning of then and now!
I feel there is something; but how and what?
I know there is somewhat; but what and why!
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.
The little bird pipeth ‘why! why!’
In the summerwoods when the sun falls low,
And the great bird sits on the opposite bough,
And stares in his face and shouts ‘how? how?’
And the black owl scuds down the mellow twilight,
And chaunts ‘how? how?’ the whole of the night.
Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built;
And a house with a chimney-pot?
Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why?
Elegiacs
Lowflowing breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm’d in the gloaming:
Thoro’ the black-stemm’d pines only the far river shines.
Creeping thro’ blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,
Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.
Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerily; the grasshopper carolleth clearly;
Deeply the turtle coos; shrilly the owlet halloos;
Winds creep; dews fell chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:
Over the pools in the burn watergnats murmur and mourn.
Sadly the far kine loweth: the glimmering water outfloweth:
Twin peaks shadow’d with pine slope to the dark hyaline.
Lowthroned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad
Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.
The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.
Thou comest morning and even; she cometh not morning or even.
False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind?
Mariana
WITH BLACKEST moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted
nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, “The day is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, “My life is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, “The night is dreary,
He cometh not,” she said;
She said, “I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!”
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse