Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Tennyson Alfred

  —— The tender grace of a day that is dead

  Will never come back to me.

  —— O for the touch of a vanished hand,

  And the sound of a voice that is still!

  God gives us love! Something to love

  He lends us; but when love is grown

  To ripeness, that on which it throve

  Falls off, and love is left alone:

  This is the curse of time. Alas!

  In grief we are not all unlearned;

  Once, through our own doors Death did pass;

  One went who never hath returned.

  This star

  Rose with us, through a little arc

  Of heaven, nor having wandered far,

  Shot on the sudden into dark.

  Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;

  Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,

  While the stars burn, the moons increase,

  And the great ages onward roll.

  Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,

  Nothing comes to thee new or strange,

  Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;

  Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

  Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella. — Go in peace, soul beautiful and blessed.

  “O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” — Daniel.

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX A: THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS

  By Wilfrid Ward

  He had often said he would go through the “De Profundis” with me line by line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read through the “De Profundis,” and gave the substance of the explanation I have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: “A B” (naming a well-known Positivist thinker) “exclaimed, when I read it to him, ‘Do leave that prayer out; I like all the rest of it.’”

  I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance) immediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence as presented by the thought of the child’s birth, and the child’s future life with all its possibilities. The poem takes the form of two greetings to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it in the world, and as we know it by physical science, as a phenomenon; as the materialist might view it; not indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in themselves the potentiality of all that was to come—”all that was to be in all that was.” These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this newly given life — this child born into the world. There is the sense of mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which, on the nebular hypothesis, Nature’s laws were working before our planet was separated off from the mass of the sun’s light, and before the similar differentiation took place in the rest of the “vast waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light.” Again, there is awe in contemplating the vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar systems “glimmering up the heights beyond” us which we partly see in the Milky Way; from that to those others which human sight can never descry. Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can conceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a single man before it. May that life be happy and noble! Viewing it still as the course determined by Nature’s laws — a course unknown to us and yet unalterably fixed — we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperous time on earth, blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to rest. Such is the first greeting — full of the poetry of life, of its wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, inspiring the hope which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of the world allow.

  After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child:

  Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,

  Where all that was to be, in all that was,

  Whirl’d for a million æons through the vast

  Waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light —

  Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,

  Thro’ all this changing world of changeless law,

  And every phase of ever-heightening life,

  And nine long months of antenatal gloom,

  With this last moon, this crescent — her dark orb

  Touch’d with earth’s light — thou comest, darling boy;

  Our own; a babe in lineament and limb

  Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;

  Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,

  Indissolubly married like our love;

  Live and be happy in thyself, and serve

  This mortal race thy kin so well, that men

  May bless thee as we bless thee, O young life,

  Breaking with laughter from the dark; and may

  The fated channel where thy motion lives

  Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy course

  Along the years of haste and random youth

  Unshatter’d; then full-current thro’ full man;

  And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,

  By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power

  To that last deep where we and thou art still.

  And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greeting contained all — all the mystery of birth, of life, of death — hears a sound unknown, unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry firmament disappears for the moment. The “deep” of infinite time and space is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other deep — the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born babe coming to us from that true world, with all the “abysmal depths of personality,” no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The proportions are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the “spirit,” the moral being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminate when he paused before the word “Spirit” in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more piercing tones: “Out of the deep — Spirit, — out of the deep.” This second greeting is in two parts:

  I

  Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,

  From that great deep, before our world begins,

  Whereon the Spi
rit of God moves as He will —

  Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,

  From that true world within the world we see,

  Whereof our world is but the bounding shore —

  Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep,

  With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun,

  Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.

  II

  For in the world, which is not ours, they said,

  “Let us make man,” and that which should be man,

  From that one light no man can look upon,

  Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons

  And all the shadows. O dear Spirit, half-lost

  In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign

  That thou art thou — who wailest being born

  And banish’d into mystery, and the pain

  Of this divisible-indivisible world

  Among the numerable-innumerable

  Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space,

  In finite-infinite Time — our mortal veil

  And shatter’d phantom of that infinite One,

  Who made thee unconceivably Thyself

  Out of His whole World-self, and all in all —

  Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape

  And ivyberry, choose; and still depart

  From death to death thro’ life and life, and find

  Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought

  Not matter, not the finite-infinite,

  But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,

  With power on thine own act and on the world.

  Note that the second greeting considers the reality of the child’s life and its meaning, the first only its appearance. The great deep of the spiritual world is “that true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore.” And this indication that the second greeting gives the deeper and truer view, is preserved in some of the side touches of description. In the first greeting, for example, the moon is spoken of as “touch’d with earth’s light”; in the second the truer and less obvious fact is suggested. It “sends the hidden sun down yon dark sea.” The material view again looks at bright and hopeful appearances in life, and it notes the new-born babe “breaking with laughter from the dark.” The spiritual view foresees the woes which, if Byron is right in calling melancholy the “telescope of truth,” are truer than the joys. It notes no longer the child’s laughter, but rather its tears, “Thou wailest being born and banished into mystery.” Life, in the spiritual view, is in part a veiling and obscuring of the true self as it is, in a world of appearances. The soul is “half lost” in the body which is part of the phenomenal world, “in thine own shadow and in this fleshly sign that thou art thou.” The suns and moons, too, are but shadows, as the body of the child itself is but a shadow — shadows of the spirit-world and of God Himself. The physical life is before the child; but not as a fatally determined course. Choice of the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer God. The wonders of the material Universe are still recognized: “Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space, in finite-infinite Time”; but they vanish into insignificance when compared to the two great facts of the spirit-world which consciousness tells us unmistakably — the facts of personality and of a responsible will. The great mystery is “Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,” but “this main-miracle, that thou art thou, with power on thine own act and on the world.”

  “Out of the deep” — in this conception of the true “deep” of the world behind the veil we have the thought which recurs so often, as in the “Passing of Arthur” and in “Crossing the Bar” — of birth and death as the coming from and returning to the spirit-world and God Himself. Birth is the coming to land from that deep; “of which our world is but the bounding shore;” death the re-embarking on the same infinite sea, for the home of truth and light.

  He seemed so much better when he had finished his explanation that I asked him to read the poem through again. This he did, more beautifully than I ever heard him read. I felt as though his long illness and his expectation of death gave more intensity and force to his rendering of this wonderful poem on the mystery of life. He began quietly, and read the concluding lines of the first “greeting,” the brief description of a peaceful old age and death, from the human standpoint, with a very tender pathos:

  And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall

  By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power,

  To that last deep where we and thou are still.

  Then he gathered force, and his voice deepened as the greeting to the immortal soul of the man was read. He raised his eyes from the book at the seventh line and looked for a moment at his hearer with an indescribable expression of awe before he uttered the word “spirit”; “Out of the deep — Spirit, — out of the deep.” When he had finished the second greeting he was trembling much. Then he read the prayer — a prayer he had told me of self-prostration before the Infinite. I think he intended it as a contrast to the analytical and reflective character of the rest. It is an outpouring of the simplest and most intense self-abandonment to the Creator, an acknowledgment, when all has been thought and said with such insight and beauty, that our best thoughts and words are as nothing in the Great Presence — in a sense parallel to the breaking off in the “Ode to the Duke of Wellington”:

  Speak no more of his renown,

  Lay your earthly fancies down.

  He began to chaunt in a loud clear voice:

  Hallowed be Thy Name — Halleluiah.

  His voice was growing tremulous as he reached the second part:

  We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee;

  We feel we are something — that also has come from Thee.

  And he broke down as he finished the prayer:

  We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to be.

  Hallowed be Thy Name — Halleluiah!

  APPENDIX B

  It will be seen below that the lines to which reference is made —

  That man’s the true cosmopolite

  Who loves his native country best,

  have been altered to suit my mother’s setting, arranged by Sir Charles Stanford, to

  He best will serve the race of men

  Who loves his native country best.

  HANDS ALL ROUND

  A NATIONAL SONG

  The Melody by EMILY, LADY TENNYSON and arranged by C. VILLIERS STANFORD

  To all the loyal hearts who long

  To keep our English Empire whole!

  To all our noble sons, the strong

  New England of the Southern Pole!

  To England under Indian skies,

  To those dark millions of her realm!

  To Canada whom we love and prize,

  Whatever statesman hold the helm.

  Hands all round! God the traitor’s hope confound!

  To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

  And the great name of England round and round.

  To all our statesmen so they be

  True leaders of the land’s desire!

  To both our Houses, may they see

  Beyond the borough and the shire!

  We sail’d wherever ship could sail,

  We founded many a mighty state;

  Pray God our greatness may not fail

  Thro’ craven fears of being great.

  Hands all round! God the traitor’s hope confound!

  To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,

  And the great name of England round and round.

  APPENDIX C

  MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS FROM UNKNOWN FRIENDS

  [During the last twenty-five years of his life my father was probably, throughout the whole English-speaking race, the Englishman who was most widely known. Hence the letters addressed to him by strangers competed in number with those which, it is well known, add a needless weariness to the heavy task of governing a civilized state. This became a corr
espondence mainly of request or of reverence, although the voice of disappointment or of envy of what is ranked above oneself which lurks in common human nature may have occasionally been audible. My father’s experience here was that of Dr. Johnson and, doubtless, of many more men of commanding eminence; that of writers submitting their work for candid criticism, charging him with conceit if he suggested publication as unadvisable; if it were advised, and the book failed, with deception. Probably many of those who wrote thus soon repented of their eloquence; at any rate nothing of this nature will be here preserved. But of the ordinary type of strangers’ letters some specimens may be of interest. And although these few have been chosen mainly from the letters addressed to my father during his last fifteen years yet they will give a general impression of the vast quantity received.

  I place first letters upon poetry submitted (or proposed for submission) to my father’s judgment.]

  (1884)

  I hope you will forgive the liberty I am taking in writing to you. I have heard a great deal about you, and I read a part of one of your poems, “The May Queen.” I have not had an opportunity to read the whole of it, but I like what I have seen very much.... I have tried to write some poems myself. I have enclosed one for you to see, which came into my mind while I was digging a ditch in my garden. I am only nine years old, and if I keep on trying some day I shall write a grand poem.

  (1882)

  Honoured Sir — It has been said: where a great apology is most needed, it is best to begin with the business at once.

  I never had the pleasure of seeing you, but it is enough for me to have had the pleasure of reading your heart in your works, “though they be but a part of your inward soul.” I am a lad scarcely seventeen summers old. In some of my leisure hours, particularly morning and evening ones, I penned a few thousand lines of small poems in fair metre, — so my simple-minded friend or two pronounce them in their partiality.... [He deprecates the suspicion that he is applying for money.] Will you allow me to forward to you through the post a few of my poems? And when your benevolent soul has given up time to read some of my verses (“the primrose fancies of a boy”), and should my productions be considered by you deserving of your good word, half the difficulty of finding a willing publisher will, I know, be removed.