‘BEAT, little heart — I give you this and this’
Who are you? What! the Lady Hamilton?
Good, I am never weary painting you.
To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan,
Or spinning at your wheel beside the vine —
Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And colour all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What Artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas? Art!
Why should I so disrelish that short word?
Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,
So fever’d! never colt would more delight
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will
To wait on one so broken, so forlorn?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I have — in Kendal church —
O yes! I hired you for a season there,
And then we parted; but you look so kind
That you will not deny my sultry throat
One draught of icy water. There — you spill
The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.
I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,
Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?
For me — they do me too much grace — for me?
O Mary, Mary!
Vexing you with words!
Words only, born of fever, or the fumes
Of that dark opiate dose you gave me, — words,
Wild babble. I have stumbled back again
Into the common clay, the sounder self.
God stay me there, if only for your sake,
The truest, kindliest, noblest-hearted wife
That ever wore a Christian marriage-ring.
My curse upon the Master’s apothegm,
That wife and children drag an Artist down!
This seem’d my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,
And lured me from the household fire on earth.
To you my days have been a life-long lie,
Grafted on half a truth; and tho’ you say
‘Take comfort you have won the Painter’s fame,’
The best in me that sees the worst in me,
And groans to see it, finds no comfort there.
What fame? I am not Raphaël, Titian — no
Nor even a Sir Joshua, some will cry.
Wrong there! The painter’s fame? but mine, that grew
Blown into glittering by the popular breath,
May float awhile beneath the sun, may roll
The rainbow hues of heaven about it —
There!
The colour’d bubble bursts above the abyss
Of Darkness, utter Lethe.
Is it so?
Her sad eyes plead for my own fame with me
To make it dearer.
Look, the sun has risen
To flame along another dreary day.
Your hand. How bright you keep your marriage-ring!
Raise me. I thank you.
Has your opiate then
Bred this black mood? or am I conscious, more
Than other Masters, of the chasm between
Work and Ideal? Or does the gloom of Age
And suffering cloud the height I stand upon
Even from myself? stand? stood . . . no more.
And yet
The world would lose, if such a wife as you
Should vanish unrecorded. Might I crave
One favour? I am bankrupt of all claim
On your obedience, and my strongest wish
Falls flat before your least unwillingness.
Still would you — if it please you — sit to me?
I dream’d last night of that clear summer noon,
When seated on a rock, and foot to foot
With your own shadow in the placid lake,
You claspt our infant daughter, heart to heart.
I had been among the hills, and brought you down
A length of staghorn-moss, and this you twined
About her cap. I see the picture yet,
Mother and child. A sound from far away,
No louder than a bee among the flowers,
A fall of water lull’d the noon asleep.
You still’d it for the moment with a song
Which often echo’d in me, while I stood
Before the great Madonna-masterpieces
Of ancient Art in Paris, or in Rome.
Mary, my crayons! if I can, I will.
You should have been — I might have made you once,
Had I but known you as I know you now —
The true Alcestis of the time. Your song —
Sit, listen! I remember it, a proof
That I — even I — at times remember’d you.
‘Beat upon mine, little heart! beat, beat!
Beat upon mine! you are mine, my sweet!
All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet,
My sweet.’
Less profile! turn to me — three-quarter face.
‘Sleep, little blossom, my honey, my bliss!
For I give you this, and I give you this
And I blind your pretty blue eyes with a kiss!
Sleep!’
Too early blinded by the kiss of death —
‘Father and Mother will watch you grow’ —
You watch’d not I, she did not grow, she died.
‘Father and Mother will watch you grow,
And gather the roses whenever they blow,
And find the white heather wherever you go,
My sweet.’
Ah, my white heather only blooms in heaven
With Milton’s amaranth. There, there, there! a child
Had shamed me at it — Down, you idle tools,
Stampt into dust — tremulous, all awry,
Blurr’d like a landskip in a ruffled pool, —
Not one stroke firm. This Art, that harlot-like
Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,
Who love her still, and whimper, impotent
To win her back before I die — and then —
Then, in the loud world’s bastard judgment-day,
One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,
Who feel no touch of my temptation, more
Than all the myriad lies, that blacken round
The corpse of every man that gains a name;
‘This model husband, this fine Artist’! Fool,
What matters? Six foot deep of burial mould
Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout
Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs
Thro’ earth, and all her graves, if He should ask
‘Why left you wife and children? for my sake,
According to my word?’ and I replied
‘Nay, Lord, for Art,’ why, that would sound so mean
That all the dead, who wait the doom of Hell
For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,
Wife-murders, — nay, the ruthless Mussulman
Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,
Would turn, and glare at me, and point and jeer,
And gibber at the worm, who, living, made
The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost
Salvation for a sketch.
I am wild again!
The coals of fire you heap upon my head
Have crazed me. Someone knocking there without?
No! Will my Indian brother come? to find
Me or my coffin? Should I know the man?
This worn-out Reason dying in her house
May leave the windows blinded, and if so,
Bid him farewell for me, and tell him —
Hope!
I hear a death-bed Angel whisper ‘Hope.’
But only Hope!” He said it . . . in the play.
His crime was of the senses; of the mind
Mine; worse, cold, calculated.
Tell my son —
O let me lean my head upon your breast.
‘Beat little heart’ on this foul brain of mine.
I once had friends — and many — none like you.
I love you more than when we married. Hope!
O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,
Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence —
For you forgive me, you are sure of that —
Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven.
Parnassus
Exegi monumentum . . .
Quod non . . .
Possit diruere . . .
. . . innumerabilis
Annorum series et fuga temporum. — HORACE.
I.
WHAT BE those crown’d forms high over the sacred fountain?
Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain,
And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither!
Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither.
Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,
And stand with my head in the zenith, and roll my voice from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro’ Earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constellations.
II.
What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,
Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?
On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening;
Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning!
Look, in their deep double shadow the crown’d ones all disappearing!
Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope for a deathless hearing!
‘Sounding for ever and ever?’ pass on! the sight confuses —
These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses!
III.
If the lips were touch’d with fire from off a pure Pierian altar,
Tho’ their music here be mortal need the singer greatly care?
Other songs for other worlds! the fire within him would not falter;
Let the golden Iliad vanish, Homer here is Homer there.
By an Evolutionist
THE LORD let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And the man said, ‘Am I your debtor?’
And the Lord—’Not yet; but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better.’
I.
If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,
Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,
I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,
Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?
II.
What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?
Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar!
OLD AGE
Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.
Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.
I.
If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute?
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne,
Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy province of the brute.
II.
I have climb’d to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past.
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire,
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last,
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher.
Far — far — away
(FOR MUSIC)
WHAT SIGHT so lured him thro’ the fields he knew
As where earth’s green stole into heaven’s own hue,
Far — far — away?
What sound was dearest in his native dells?
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far — far — away.
What vague world-whisper, mystic pain or joy,
Thro’ those three words would haunt him when a boy,
Far — far — away?
A whisper from his dawn of life? a breath
From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death
Far — far — away?
Far, far, how far? from o’er the gates of Birth,
The faint horizons, all the bounds of earth,
Far — far — away?
What charm in words, a charm no words could give?
O dying words, can Music make you live
Far — far — away?
Politics
WE MOVE, the wheel must always move,
Nor always on the plain,
And if we move to such a goal
As Wisdom hopes to gain,
Then you that drive, and know your craft,
Will firmly hold the rein,
Nor lend an ear to random cries,
Or you may drive in vain;
For some cry ‘Quick’ and some cry ‘Slow,’
But, while the hills remain,
Up hill ‘Too-slow’ will need the whip,
Down hill ‘Too-quick’ the chain.
Beautiful City
BEAUTIFUL city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll’d again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!
The Roses on the Terrace
ROSE, on this terrace fifty years ago,
When I was in my June, you in your May,
Two words, ‘My Rose,’ set all your face aglow,
And now that I am white and you are gray,
That blush of fifty years ago, my dear,
Blooms in the past, but close to me to-day,
As this red rose, which on our terrace here
Glows in the blue of fifty miles away.
The Play
ACT first, this Earth, a stage so gloom’d with woe
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.
On one who affected an Effeminate Manner
WHILE man and woman still are incomplete,
I prize that soul where man and woman meet,
Which types all Nature’s male and female plan,
But, friend, man-woman is not woman-man.
To one who ran down the English
YOU make our faults too gross, and thence maintain
Our darker future. May your fears be vain!
At times the small black fly upon the pane
May seem the black ox of the distant plain.
The Snowdrop
MANY, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!
The Throstle
‘SUMMER is coming, summer is coming.
I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,’
Yes, my wild little Poet.
Sing the new year in under the blue.
Last year you sang it as gladly.
‘New, new,
new, new’! Is it then so new
That you should carol so madly?
‘Love again, song again, nest again, young again,’
Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,
See, there is hardly a daisy.
‘Here again, here, here, here, happy year’!
O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.
The Oak
LIVE thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;
Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed,
Soberer-hued
Gold again.
All his leaves
Fallen at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough,
Naked strength.
In Memoriam. W. G. Ward
FAREWELL, whose like on earth I shall not find,
Whose Faith and Work were bells of full accord,
My friend, the most unworldly of mankind,
Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward,
How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,
How loyal in the following of thy Lord!
•
THE DEATH OF ŒNONE, AND OTHER POEMS
The last collection of poems to be published during Tennyson’s lifetime was published in 1892. According to Greek mythology, Œnone was a mountain nymph on Mount Ida in Phrygia. Her father was Cebren, a river-god, and her name suggests the gift of wine. Paris, son of the king Priam and the queen Hecuba, fell in love with Œnone when he was a shepherd on the slopes of Mount Ida, having been exposed in infancy, but rescued by the herdsman Agelaus. The couple married, and Œnone gave birth to a son, Corythus. When Paris later abandoned her to return to Troy and sail across the Aegean to capture Helen, Œnone predicted the Trojan War. Out of revenge for Paris’ betrayal, she sent Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy. When mortally wounded by an arrow, Paris begged Œnone to heal him with her herbal arts, but she refused and cast him out with scorn, and so Paris died on the lower slopes of Ida. Overcome with remorse, Œnone threw herself on to his burning funeral pyre.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 129
