The only extensive surviving narration of Œnone and Paris is by Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, Book X.259-489, which tells of the return of wounded Paris to Œnone. Tennyson adapted Quintus’ classical treatment of the theme for The Death of Œnone, making full use of the myth’s tragic potential. This was Tennyson’s second attempt at a poem on the subject; his previous attempt Œnone was published much earlier in 1829 and was critically panned.
Œnone holding pan pipes – a detail from a sarcophagus with the Judgement of Paris, Rome
CONTENTS
June Bracken and Heather
To ——
To the Master of Balliol
The Death of Œnone
St. Telemachus
Akbar’s Dream
Notes to Akbar’s Dream
The Bandit’s Death
The Church-Warden and the Curate
Charity
Kapiolani
The Dawn
The Making of Man
Mechanophilus
Riflemen Form!
The Tourney
The Wanderer
Poets and Critics
A Voice Spake Out of the Skies
Doubt and Prayer
Faith
The Silent Voices
God and the Universe
The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale
To the Mourners.
The first edition of Tennyson’s last collection
June Bracken and Heather
To ——
THERE on the top of the down,
The wild heather round me and over me June’s high blue,
When I look’d at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown,
I thought to myself I would offer this book to you,
This, and my love together,
To you that are seventy-seven,
With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,
And a fancy as summer-new
As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.
To the Master of Balliol
I.
DEAR MASTER in our classic town,
You, loved by all the younger gown
There at Balliol,
Lay your Plato for one minute down,
II.
And read a Grecian tale re-told,
Which, cast in later Grecian mould,
Quintus Calaber
Somewhat lazily handled of old;
III.
And on this white midwinter day —
For have the far-off hymns of May,
All her melodies,
All her harmonies echo’d away? —
IV.
To-day, before you turn again
To thoughts that lift the soul of men,
Hear my cataract’s
Downward thunder in hollow and glen,
V.
Till, led by dream and vague desire,
The woman, gliding toward the pyre,
Find her warrior
Stark and dark in his funeral fire.
The Death of Œnone
ŒNONE sat within the cave from out
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze
Down at the Troad; but the goodly view
Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen,
And gliding thro’ the branches over-bower’d
The naked Three, were wither’d long ago,
And thro’ the sunless winter morning-mist
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth.
And while she stared at those dead cords that ran
Dark thro’ the mist, and linking tree to tree,
But once were gayer than a dawning sky
With many a pendent bell and fragrant star,
Her Past became her Present, and she saw
Him, climbing toward her with the golden fruit,
Him, happy to be chosen judge of Gods,
Her husband in the flush of youth and dawn,
Paris, himself as beauteous as a God.
Anon from out the long ravine below,
She heard a wailing cry, that seem’d at first
Thin as the bat like shrillings of the Dead
When driven to Hades, but, in coming near,
Across the downward thunder of the brook
Sounded ‘Œnone’; and on a sudden he,
Paris, no longer beauteous as a God,
Struck by a poison’d arrow in the fight,
Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro’ the mist
Rose, like the wraith of his dead self, and moan’d
‘Œnone, my Œnone, while we dwelt
Together in this valley — happy then —
Too happy had I died within thine arms,
Before the feud of Gods had marr’d our peace,
And sunder’d each from each. I am dying now
Pierced by a poison’d dart. Save me. Thou knowest,
Taught by some God, whatever herb or balm
May clear the blood from poison, and thy fame
Is blown thro’ all the Troad, and to thee
The shepherd brings his adder-bitten lamb,
The wounded warrior climbs from Troy to thee.
My life and death are in thy hand. The Gods
Avenge on stony hearts a fruitless prayer
For pity. Let me owe my life to thee.
I wrought thee bitter wrong, but thou forgive,
Forget it. Man is but the slave of Fate.
Œnone, by thy love which once was mine,
Help, heal me. I am poison’d to the heart.’
‘And I to mine’ she said ‘ Adulterer,
Go back to thine adulteress and die!’
He groan’d, he turn’d, and in the mist at once
Became a shadow, sank and disappear’d,
But, ere the mountain rolls into the plain,
Fell headlong dead; and of the shepherds one
Their oldest, and the same who first had found
Paris, a naked babe, among the woods
Of Ida, following lighted on him there,
And shouted, and the shepherds heard and came.
One raised the Prince, one sleek’d the squalid hair,
One kiss’d his hand, another closed his eyes,
And then, remembering the gay playmate rear’d
Among them, and forgetful of the man,
Whose crime had half unpeopled Ilion, these
All that day long labour’d, hewing the pines,
And built their shepherd-prince a funeral pile;
And, while the star of eve was drawing light
From the dead sun, kindled the pyre, and all
Stood round it, hush’d, or calling on his name.
But when the white fog vanish’d like a ghost
Before the day, and every topmost pine
Spired into bluest heaven, still in her cave,
Amazed, and ever seeming stared upon
By ghastlier than the Gorgon head, a face, —
His face deform’d by lurid blotch and blain —
There, like a creature frozen to the heart
Beyond all hope of warmth, Œnone sat
Not moving, till in front of that ravine
Which drowsed in gloom, self-darken’d from the west,
The sunset blazed along the wall of Troy.
Then her head sank, she slept, and thro’ her dream
A ghostly murmur floated, ‘Come to me,
Œnone! I can wrong thee now no more,
Œnone, my Œnone,’ and the dream
Wail’d in her, when she woke beneath the stars.
What star eould burn so low? not Ilion yet.
What light was there? She rose and slowly down,
By the long torrent’s ever-deepen’d roar,
Paced, following, as in trance, the silent cry.
She waked a bird of prey that scream’d and past
She rou
sed a snake that hissing writhed away;
A panther sprang across her path, she heard
The shriek of some lost life among the pines,
But when she gain’d the broader vale, and saw
The ring of faces redden’d by the flames
Enfolding that dark body which had lain
Of old in her embrace, paused — and then ask’d
Falteringly, ‘Who lies on yonder pyre?’
But every man was mute for reverence.
Then moving quickly forward till the heat
Smote on her brow, she lifted up a voice
Of shrill command, ‘Who burns upon the pyre?’
Whereon their oldest and their boldest said,
‘He, whom thou wouldst not heal!’ and all at once
The morning light of happy marriage broke
Thro’ all the clouded years of widowhood,
And muffling up her comely head, and crying
‘Husband!’ she leapt upon the funeral pile,
And mixt herself with him and past in fire.
St. Telemachus
HAD the fierce ashes of some fiery peak
Been hurl’d so high they ranged about the globe?
For day by day, thro’ many a blood-red eve,
In that four-hundredth summer after Christ,
The wrathful sunset glared against a cross
Rear’d on the tumbled ruins of an old fane
No longer sacred to the Sun, and flamed
On one huge slope beyond, where in his cave
The man, whose pious hand had built the cross,
A man who never changed a word with men,
Fasted and pray’d, Telemachus the Saint.
Eve after eve that haggard anchorite
Would haunt the desolated fane, and there
Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low
‘Vicisti Galilæe’; louder again,
Spurning a shatter’d fragment of the God,
‘Vicisti Galilæe!’ but — when now
Bathed in that lurid crimson — ask’d ‘Is earth
On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god
Wroth at his fall?’ and heard an answer ‘Wake
Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life
Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.’
And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost
The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings
Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West,
And at his ear he heard a whisper ‘Rome’
And in his heart he cried ‘ The call of God!’
And call’d arose, and, slowly plunging down
Thro’ that disastrous glory, set his face
By waste and field and town of alien tongue,
Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere
Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn
Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.
Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch’d his goal,
The Christian city. All her splendour fail’d
To lure those eyes that only yearn’d to see,
Fleeting betwixt her column’d palace-walls,
The shape with wings. Anon there past a crowd
With shameless laughter, Pagan oath, and jest,
Hard Romans brawling of their monstrous games;
He, all but deaf thro’ age and weariness,
And muttering to himself ‘The call of God’
And borne along by that full stream of men,
Like some old wreck on some indrawing sea,
Gain’d their huge Colosseum. The caged beast
Yell’d, as he yell’d of yore for Christian blood.
Three slaves were trailing a dead lion away,
One, a dead man. He stumbled in, and sat
Blinded; but when the momentary gloom,
Made by the noonday blaze without, had left
His aged eyes, he raised them, and beheld
A blood-red awning waver overhead,
The dust send up a steam of human blood,
The gladiators moving toward their fight,
And eighty thousand Christian faces watch
Man murder man. A sudden strength from heaven,
As some great shock may wake a palsied limb,
Turn’d him again to boy, for up he sprang,
And glided lightly down the stairs, and o’er
The barrier that divided beast from man
Slipt, and ran on, and flung himself between
The gladiatorial swords, and call’d ‘Forbear
In the great name of Him who died for men,
Christ Jesus!’ For one moment afterward
A silence follow’d as of death, and then
A hiss as from a wilderness of snakes,
Then one deep roar as of a breaking sea,
And then a shower of stones that stoned him dead,
And then once more a silence as of death.
His dream became a deed that woke the world,
For while the frantic rabble in half-amaze
Stared at him dead, thro’ all the nobler hearts
In that vast Oval ran a shudder of shame.
The Baths, the Forum gabbled of his death,
And preachers linger’d o’er his dying words,
Which would not die, but echo’d on to reach
Honorius, till he heard them, and decreed
That Rome no more should wallow in this old lust
Of Paganism, and make her festal hour
Dark with the blood of man who murder’d man.
Akbar’s Dream
AN INSCRIPTION BY ABUL FAZL FOR A TEMPLE IN KASHMIR (Blochmann xxxii.)
O GOD in every temple I see people that see thee,
and in every language I hear spoken, people praise thee.
Polytheism and Islám feel after thee.
Each religion says, ‘Thou art one, without equal.’
If it be a mosque people murmur the holy prayer,
and if it be a Christian Church, people ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister,
and sometimes the mosque.
But it is thou whom I search from temple to temple.
Thy elect have no dealings with either heresy or orthodoxy;
for neither of them stands behind the screen of thy truth.
Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox,
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller.
AKBAR and ABUL FAZL before the palace
at Futehpur-Sikri at night.
‘LIGHT of the nations’ ask’d his Chronicler
Of Akbar ‘what has darken’d thee to-night?’
Then, after one quick glance upon the stars,
And turning slowly toward him, Akbar said
‘The shadow of a dream — an idle one
It may be. Still I raised my heart to heaven,
I pray’d against the dream. To pray, to do —
To pray, to do according to the prayer,
Are, both, to worship Alla, but the prayers,
That have no successor in deed, are faint
And pale in Alla’s eyes, fair mothers they
Dying in childbirth of dead sons. I vow’d
Whate’er my dreams, I still would do the right
Thro’ all the vast dominion which a sword,
That only conquers men to conquer peace,
Has won me. AlIa be my guide!
But come,
My noble friend, my faithful counsellor,
Sit by my side. While thou art one with me,
I seem no longer like a lonely man
In the king’s garden, gathering here and there
From each fair plant the blossom choicest-grown
To wreathe a crown not only for the king
But in due time for every Mussulmân,
Brahmin, and Buddhist, Christian, and Parsee,
<
br /> Thro’ all the warring world of Hindustan.
Well spake thy brother in his hymn to heaven
“Thy glory baffles wisdom. AIl the tracks
Of science making toward Thy Perfectness
Are blinding desert sand; we scarce can spell
The Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love.”
He knows Himself, men nor themselves nor Him,
For every splinter’d fraction of a sect
Will clamour “I am on the Perfect Way,
All else is to perdition.”
Shall the rose
Cry to the lotus “No flower thou”? the palm
Call to the cypress “I alone am fair”?
The mango spurn the melon at his foot?
“Mine is the one fruit Alla made for man.”
Look how the living pulse of Alla beats
Thro’ all His world. If every single star
Should shriek its claim “I only am in heaven”
Why that were such sphere-music as the Greek
Had hardly dream’d of. There is light in all,
And light, with more or less of shade, in all
Man-modes of worship; but our Ulama,
Who “sitting on green sofas contemplate
The torment of the damn’d” already, these
Are like wild brutes new-caged — the narrower
The cage, the more their fury. Me they front
With sullen brows. What wonder! I decreed
That even the dog was clean, that men may taste
Swine-flesh, drink wine; they know too that whene’er
In our free Hall, where each philosophy
And mood of faith may hold its own, they blurt
Their furious formalisms, I but hear
The clash of tides that meet in narrow seas, —
Not the Great Voice not the true Deep.
To drive
A people from their ancient fold of Faith,
And wall them up perforce in mine — unwise,
Unkinglike; — and the morning of my reign
Was redden’d by that cloud of shame when I . . .
I hate the rancour of their castes and creeds,
I let men worship as they will, I reap
No revenue from the field of unbelief.
I cull from every faith and race the best
And bravest soul for counsellor and friend.
I loathe the very name of infidel.
I stagger at the Korân and the sword.
I shudder at the Christian and the stake;
Yet “Alla,” says their sacred book, “is Love,”
And when the Goan Padre quoting Him,
Issa Ben Mariam, his own prophet, cried
“Love one another little ones” and “bless”
Whom? even “your persecutors”! there methought
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 130
