by Homer
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon, 5
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, 10
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops, 15
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sunset-flush’d; and, dew’d with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
The charmed sunset linger’d low adown
In the red West; thro’ mountain clefts the dale 20
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
And meadow, set with slender galingale;
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel with faces pale, 25
Dark faces pale against that rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them 30
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake, 35
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore 40
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.” 45
CHORIC SONG
I
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 50
Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro’ the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 55
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
II
Why are we weigh’d upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone, 60
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown;
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings, 65
Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;
Nor harken what the inner spirit sings,
“There is no joy but calm!” —
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?
III
Lo! in the middle of the wood, 70
The folded leaf is woo’d from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep’d at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow 75
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days 80
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.
IV
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea. 85
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last? 90
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave? 95
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence — ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.
V
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem 100
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other’s whisper’d speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day, 105
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory, 110
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap’d over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!
VI
Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives 115
And their warm tears; but all hath suffer’d change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold 120
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years’ war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain. 125
The Gods are hard to reconcile;
’Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labor unto aged breath, 130
Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
VII
But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet — while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly —
With half-dropped eyelids still, 135
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill —
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro’ the thick-twined vine — 140
To watch the emerald-color’d water falling
Thro’ many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch’d out beneath the pine.
VIII
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, 145
The Lotos blows
by every winding creek;
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Thro’ every hollow cave and alley lone
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action, and of motion we, 150
Roll’d to starboard, roll’d to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. 155
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 160
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho’ the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, 165
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer — some, ’tis whisper’d — down in hell
Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 170
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
You Ask Me, Why
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
YOU ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till, 5
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown, 10
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent;
Where faction seldom gathers head,
But, by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought 15
Hath time and space to work and spread.
Should banded unions persecute
Opinions, and induce a time
When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute, 20
Tho’ power should make from land to land
The name of Britain trebly great —
Tho’ every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand —
Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth, 25
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Love Thou Thy Land
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
LOVE thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied past, and used
Within the present, but transfused
Thro’ future time by power of thought;
True love turn’d round on fixed poles, 5
Love, that endures not sordid ends,
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers, and immortal souls.
But pamper not a hasty time,
Nor feed with crude imaginings 10
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.
Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait for day, 15
Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.
Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds. 20
Watch what main-currents draw the years:
Cut Prejudice against the grain.
But gentle words are always gain;
Regard the weakness of thy peers.
Nor toil for title, place, or touch 25
Of pension, neither count on praise
It grows to guerdon after-days.
Nor deal in watch-words overmuch;
Not clinging to some ancient saw,
Not master’d by some modern term, 30
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm;
And in its season bring the law,
That from Discussion’s lip may fall
With Life that, working strongly, binds —
Set in all lights by many minds, 35
To close the interests of all.
For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro’ many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form. 40
Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.
So let the change which comes be free 45
To ingroove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
A saying hard to shape in act;
For all the past of Time reveals 50
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.
Even now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom —
The Spirit of the years to come 55
Yearning to mix himself with Life.
A slow-develop’d strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States — 60
The warders of the growing hour,
But vague in vapor, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.
Of many changes, aptly join’d, 65
Is bodied forth the second whole.
Regard gradation, lest the soul
Of Discord race the rising wind;
A wind to puff your idol-fires,
And heap their ashes on the head; 70
To shame the boast so often made,
That we are wiser than our sires.
O, yet, if Nature’s evil star
Drive men in manhood, as in youth,
To follow flying steps of Truth 75
Across the brazen bridge of war —
If New and Old, disastrous feud,
Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true, till Time shall close
That Principles are rain’d in blood; 80
Not yet the wise of heart would cease
To hold his hope thro’ shame and guilt,
But with his hand against the hilt,
Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;
Not less, tho’ dogs of Faction bay, 85
Would serve his kind in deed and word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword,
That knowledge takes the sword away —
Would love the gleams of love that broke
From either side, nor
veil his eyes; 90
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke.
To-morrow yet would reap to-day,
As we bear blossom of the dead;
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed 95
Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.
List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
List of Poets in Alphabetical Order
Sir Galahad
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
MY good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, 5
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter’d spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel;
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands, 10
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
That lightly rain from ladies’ hands.
How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favors fall!
For them I battle till the end, 15
To save from shame and thrall;
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow’d in crypt and shrine;
I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden’s hand in mine. 20
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier transports move and thrill;
So keep I fair thro’ faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.
When down the stormy crescent goes, 25
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns.
Then by some secret shrine I ride;
I hear a voice, but none are there; 30
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
The tapers burning fair.
