Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  For which, in branding summers of Bengal,

  Or ev’n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air

  I panted, seems, as I re-listen to it,

  Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,

  To me that loved him; for ‘O brook,’ he says,

  ‘O babbling brook,’ says Edmund in his rhyme,

  ‘Whence come you?’ and the brook, why not? replies.

  I come from haunts of coot and hern,

  I make a sudden sally,

  And sparkle out among the fern,

  To bicker down a valley.

  By thirty hills I hurry down,

  Or slip between the ridges,

  By twenty thorps, a little town,

  And half a hundred bridges.

  Till last by Philip’s farm I flow

  To join the brimming river,

  For men may come and men may go,

  But I go on for ever.

  ‘Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,

  Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge,

  It has more ivy; there the river; and there

  Stands Philip’s farm where brook and river meet.

  I chatter over stony ways,

  In little sharps and trebles,

  I bubble into eddying bays,

  I babble on the pebbles.

  With many a curve my banks I fret

  By many a field and fallow,

  And many a fairy foreland set

  With willow-weed and mallow.

  I chatter, chatter, as I flow

  To join the brimming river,

  For men may come and men may go,

  But I go on for ever.

  ‘But Philip chatter’d more than brook or bird;

  Old Philip; all about the fields you caught

  His weary daylong chirping, like the dry

  High-elbow’d grigs that leap in summer grass.

  I wind about, and in and out,

  With here a blossom sailing,

  And here and there a lusty trout,

  And here and there a grayling,

  And here and there a foamy flake

  Upon me, as I travel

  With many a silvery waterbreak

  Above the golden gravel,

  And draw them all along, and flow

  To join the brimming river,

  For men may come and men may go,

  But I go on for ever.

  ‘O darling Katie Willows, his one child!

  A maiden of our century, yet most meek;

  A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse;

  Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;

  Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair

  In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell

  Divides threefold to show the fruit within.

  ‘Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn,

  Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed,

  James Willows, of one name and heart with her.

  For here I came, twenty years back — the week

  Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost

  By that old bridge which, half in ruins then,

  Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam

  Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost,

  Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon,

  And push’d at Philip’s garden-gate. The gate,

  Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge,

  Stuck; and he clamour’d from a casement, “Run”

  To Katie somewhere in the walks below,

  “Run, Katie!” Katie never ran: she moved

  To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers,

  A little flutter’d, with her eyelids down,

  Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

  ‘What was it? less of sentiment than sense

  Had Katie; not illiterate; nor of those

  Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,

  And nursed by mealy-mouth’d philanthropies,

  Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

  ‘She told me. She and James had quarrell’d. Why?

  What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause;

  James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,

  I learnt that James had flickering jealousies

  Which anger’d her. Who anger’d James? I said.

  But Katie snatch’d her eyes at once from mine,

  And sketching with her slender pointed foot

  Some figure like a wizard pentagram

  On garden gravel, let my query pass

  Unclaim’d, in flushing silence, till I ask’d

  If James were coming. “Coming every day,”

  She answer’d, “ever longing to explain,

  But evermore her father came across

  With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;

  And James departed vext with him and her.”

  How could I help her? “Would I — was it wrong?”

  (Claspt hands and that petitionary grace

  Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)

  “O would I take her father for one hour,

  For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!”

  And even while she spoke, I saw where James

  Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,

  Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

  ‘O Katie, what I suffer’d for your sake!

  For in I went, and call’d old Philip out

  To show the farm: full willingly he rose

  He led me thro’ the short sweet-smelling lanes

  Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went.

  He praised his land, his horses, his machines;

  He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs;

  He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens;

  His pigeons, who in session on their roofs

  Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:

  Then from the plaintive mother’s teat he took

  Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,

  And naming those, his friends, for whom they were:

  Then crost the common into Darnley chase

  To show Sir Arthur’s deer. In copse and fern

  Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.

  Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,

  He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said:

  “That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire.”

  And there he told a long long-winded tale

  Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,

  And how it was the thing his daughter wish’d,

  And how he sent the bailiff to the farm

  To learn the price, and what the price he ask’d,

  And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,

  But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;

  He gave them line: and five days after that

  He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,

  Who then and there had offer’d something more,

  But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;

  He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;

  He gave them line: and how by chance at last

  (It might be May or April, he forgot,

  The last of April or the first of May)

  He found the bailiff riding by the farm,

  And, talking from the point, he drew him in,

  And there he mellow’d all his heart with ale,

  Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

  ‘Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he,

  Poor fellow, could he help it? recommenced,

  And ran thro’ all the coltish chronicle,

  Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,

  Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,

  Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,

  Till, not to die a listener, I arose,

  And with me Philip, talking still; and so

  We turn’d our foreheads from the falling s
un,

  And following our own shadows thrice as long

  As when they follow’d us from Philip’s door,

  Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content

  Re-risen in Katie’s eyes, and all things well.

  I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

  I slide by hazel covers;

  I move the sweet forget-me-nots

  That grow for happy lovers.

  I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

  Among my skimming swallows;

  I make the netted sunbeam dance

  Against my sandy shallows.

  I murmur under moon and star:

  In brambly wildernesses:

  I linger by my shingly bars;

  I loiter round my cresses;

  And out again I curve and flow

  To join the brimming river,

  For men may come and men may go,

  But I go on for ever.

  Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone,

  All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund, sleeps,

  Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,

  But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome

  Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace: and he,

  Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words

  Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb:

  I scraped the lichen from it: Katie walks

  By the long wash of Australasian seas

  Far off, and holds her head to other stars,

  And breathes in April-autumns. All are gone.’

  So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile

  In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind

  Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o’er the brook

  A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,

  Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath

  Of tender air made tremble in the hedge

  The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings;

  And he look’d up. There stood a maiden near,

  Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared

  On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair

  In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell

  Divides threefold to show the fruit within:

  Then, wondering, ask’d her ‘Are you from the farm?’

  ‘Yes’ answer’d she. ‘Pray stay a little pardon me;

  What do they call you?’ ‘Katie.’ ‘That were strange.

  What surname?’ ‘Willows.’ ‘No!’ ‘That is my name.’

  ‘Indeed!’ and here he look’d so self-perplext,

  That Katie laugh’d, and laughing blush’d, till he

  Laugh’d also, but as one before he wakes,

  Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream.

  Then looking at her; ‘Too happy, fresh and fair,

  Too fresh and fair in our sad world’s best bloom,

  To be the ghost of one who bore your name

  About these meadows, twenty years ago.’

  ‘Have you not heard?’ said Katie, ‘we came back.

  We bought the farm we tenanted before.

  Am I so like her? so they said on board.

  Sir, if you knew her in her English days,

  My mother, as it seems you did, the days

  That most she loves to talk of, come with me.

  My brother James is in the harvest-field

  But she — you will be welcome — O, come in!’

  The Letters

  Still on the tower stood the vane,

  A black yew gloomed the stagnant air,

  I peered athwart the chancel pane

  And saw the altar cold and bare.

  A clog of lead was round my feet,

  A band of pain across my brow;

  “Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet

  Before you hear my marriage vow.”

  I turned and hummed a bitter song

  That mocked the wholesome human heart,

  And then we met in wrath and wrong,

  We met, but only met to part.

  Full cold my greeting was and dry;

  She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;

  I saw with half-unconscious eye

  She wore the colours I approved.

  She took the little ivory chest,

  With half a sigh she turned the key,

  Then raised her head with lips comprest,

  And gave my letters back to me.

  And gave the trinkets and the rings,

  My gifts, when gifts of mine could please;

  As looks a father on the things

  Of his dead son, I looked on these.

  She told me all her friends had said;

  I raged against the public liar;

  She talked as if her love were dead,

  But in my words were seeds of fire.

  “No more of love; your sex is known:

  I never will be twice deceived.

  Henceforth I trust the man alone,

  The woman cannot be believed.

  Through slander, meanest spawn of Hell -

  And woman’s slander is the worst,

  And you, whom once I loved so well,

  Through you, my life will be accurst.”

  I spoke with heart, and heat and force,

  I shook her breast with vague alarms -

  Like torrents from a mountain’s source

  We rushed into each other’s arms.

  We parted: sweetly gleamed the stars,

  And sweet the vapour-braided blue,

  Low breezes fanned the belfry bars,

  As homeward by the church I drew.

  The very graves appeared to smile,

  So fresh they rose in shadowed swells;

  “Dark porch,” I said, “and silent aisle,

  There comes a sound of marriage bells.”

  The Daisy

  Written at Edinburgh

  O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine,

  In lands of palm and southern pine;

  In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,

  Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.

  What Roman strength Turbia show’d

  In ruin, by the mountain road;

  How like a gem, beneath, the city

  Of little Monaco, basking, glow’d.

  How richly down the rocky dell

  The torrent vineyard streaming fell

  To meet the sun and sunny waters,

  That only heaved with a summer swell.

  What slender campanili grew

  By bays, the peacock’s neck in hue;

  Where, here and there, on sandy beaches

  A milky-bell’d amaryllis blew.

  How young Columbus seem’d to rove,

  Yet present in his natal grove,

  Now watching high on mountain cornice,

  And steering, now, from a purple cove,

  Now pacing mute by ocean’s rim;

  Till, in a narrow street and dim,

  I stay’d the wheels at Cogoletto,

  And drank, and loyally drank to him.

  Nor knew we well what pleased us most,

  Not the clipt palm of which they boast;

  But distant colour, happy hamlet,

  A moulder’d citadel on the coast,

  Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen

  A light amid its olives green;

  Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;

  Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,

  Where oleanders flush’d the bed

  Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;

  And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten

  Of ice, far up on a mountain head.

  We loved that hall, tho’ white and cold,

  Those niched shapes of noble mould,

  A princely people’s awful princes,

  The grave, severe Genovese of old.

  At Florence too what golden hours,

  In those long galleries, were ours;

  What drives about the fresh Cascinè

  Or walks in Boboli’s ducal bowers.


  In bright vignettes, and each complete,

  Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,

  Or palace, how the city glitter’d,

  Thro’ cypress avenues, at our feet.

  But when we crost the Lombard plain

  Remember what a plague of rain;

  Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma;

  At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.

  And stern and sad (so rare the smiles

  Of sunlight) look’d the Lombard piles;

  Porch-pillars on the lion resting,

  And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.

  O Milan, O the chanting quires,

  The giant windows’ blazon’d fires,

  The height, the space, the gloom, the glory!

  A mount of marble, a hundred spires!

  I climb’d the roofs at break of day;

  Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.

  I stood among the silent statues,

  And statued pinnacles, mute as they.

  How faintly-flush’d, how phantom-fair,

  Was Monte Rosa, hanging there

  A thousand shadowy-pencill’d valleys

  And snowy dells in a golden air.

  Remember how we came at last

  To Como; shower and storm and blast

  Had blown the lake beyond his limit,

  And all was flooded; and how we past

  From Como, when the light was gray,

  And in my head, for half the day,

  The rich Virgilian rustic measure

  Of Lari Maxume, all the way,

  Like ballad-burthen music, kept,

  As on The Lariano crept

  To that fair port below the castle

  Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;

  Or hardly slept, but watch’d awake

  A cypress in the moonlight shake,

  The moonlight touching o’er a terrace

  One tall Agavè above the lake.

  What more? we took our last adieu,

  And up the snowy Splugen drew,

  But ere we reach’d the highest summit

  I pluck’d a daisy, I gave it you.

  It told of England then to me,

  And now it tells of Italy.

  O love, we two shall go no longer

  To lands of summer across the sea;

  So dear a life your arms enfold

  Whose crying is a cry for gold:

  Yet here to-night in this dark city,

  When ill and weary, alone and cold,

  I found, tho’ crush’d to hard and dry,

  This nurseling of another sky

  Still in the little book you lent me,

  And where you tenderly laid it by:

  And I forgot the clouded Forth,

  The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth,

  The bitter east, the misty summer

  And gray metropolis of the North.

  Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,

  Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,

  Perchance, to dream you still beside me,

  My fancy fled to the South again.