But none are bold enough for Kate,
She cannot find a fitting mate.
SONNET
Written, on hearing of the outbreak of the Polish Insurrection.
Blow ye the trumpet, gather from afar The hosts to battle: be not bought and sold. Arise, brave Poles, the boldest of the bold; Break through your iron shackles–fling them far. O for those days of Piast, ere the Czar Grew to this strength among his deserts cold; When even to Moscow’s cupolas were rolled The growing murmurs of the Polish war!
Now must your noble anger blaze out more Than when from Sobieski, clan by clan,
The Moslem myriads fell, and fled before– Than when Zamoysky smote the Tartar Khan, Than earlier, when on the Baltic shore
Boleslas drove the Pomeranian.
POLAND
Reprinted without alteration in 1872, except the removal of italics in “now” among the ‘Early Sonnets’.
How long, O God, shall men be ridden down, And trampled under by the last and least Of men? The heart of Poland hath not ceased To quiver, tho’ her sacred blood doth drown The fields; and out of every smouldering town Cries to Thee, lest brute Power be increased, Till that o’ergrown Barbarian in the East Transgress his ample bound to some new crown:– Cries to thee, “Lord, how long shall these things be? How long this icyhearted Muscovite
Oppress the region?” Us, O Just and Good, Forgive, who smiled when she was torn in three; Us, who stand now, when we should aid the right– A matter to be wept with tears of blood!
TO–
Reprinted without alteration as first of the ‘Early Sonnets’ in 1872; subsequently in the twelfth line “That tho'” was substituted for “Altho’,” and the last line was altered to–
“And either lived in either’s heart and speech,”
and “hath” was not italicised.
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair, Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, “All this hath been before, All this _hath_ been, I know not when or where”. So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face, Our thought gave answer each to each, so true– Opposed mirrors each reflecting each–
Altho’ I knew not in what time or place, Methought that I had often met with you, And each had lived in the other’s mind and speech.
O DARLING ROOM
I
O darling room, my heart’s delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white, There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write.
II
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter’s vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene.
III
Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquisite,
With two such couches soft and white; Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH
You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.
When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could _not_ forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.
THE SKIPPING ROPE
This silly poem was first published in the edition of 1842, and was retained unaltered till 1851, when it was finally suppressed.
Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by,
Stand off, or else my skipping-rope Will hit you in the eye.
How lightly whirls the skipping-rope! How fairy-like you fly!
Go, get you gone, you muse and mope– I hate that silly sigh.
Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope, Or tell me how to die.
There, take it, take my skipping-rope, And hang yourself thereby.
TIMBUCTOO
A POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE CHANCELLOR’S MEDAL AT THE ‘Cambridge Commencement’ M.DCCCXXIX BY A. TENNYSON Of Trinity College.
Printed in the Cambridge ‘Chronicle and Journal’ for Friday, 10th July, 1839, and at the University Press by James Smith, among the ‘Profusiones Academicae Praemiis annuis dignatae, et in Curia Cantabrigiensi Recitatae Comitiis Maximis’ A.D. M.DCCCXXIX. Reprinted in an edition of the ‘Cambridge Prize Poems’ from 1813 to 1858 inclusive, by Messrs. Macmillan in 1859, but without any alteration, except in punctuation and the substitution of small letters for capitals where the change was appropriate; and again in 1893 in the appendix to the reprint of the ‘Poems by Two Brothers’.
Deep in that lion-haunted island lies A mystic city, goal of enterprise.
(Chapman.)
I stood upon the Mountain which o’erlooks The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Afric from green Europe, when the Sun Had fall’n below th’ Atlantick, and above The silent Heavens were blench’d with faery light, Uncertain whether faery light or cloud, Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue Slumber’d unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale. I gaz’d upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed The limits of his prowess, pillars high Long time eras’d from Earth: even as the sea When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves. And much I mus’d on legends quaint and old Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth Toward their brightness, ev’n as flame draws air; But had their being in the heart of Man As air is th’ life of flame: and thou wert then A center’d glory–circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves Have buried deep, and thou of later name Imperial Eldorado roof’d with gold:
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change, All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die. As when in some great City where the walls Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng’d Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retir’d At midnight, in the lone Acropolis.
Before the awful Genius of the place Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees, Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith Her phantasy informs them. Where are ye Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green? Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms, The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering Capes and your gold-sanded bays Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds? Where are the infinite ways which, Seraph-trod, Wound thro’ your great Elysian solitudes, Whose lowest depths were, as with visible love, Fill’d with Divine effulgence, circumfus’d, Flowing between the clear and polish’d stems, And ever circling round their emerald cones In coronals and glories, such as gird
The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven? For nothing visible, they say, had birth In that blest ground but it was play’d about With its peculiar glory. Then I rais’d
My voice and cried “Wide Afric, doth thy Sun Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair As those which starr’d the night o’ the Elder World? Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?” A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! The bright descent Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look’d into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs,
So that with hasty motion I did veil My vision with both hands, and saw before me Such colour’d spots as dance athwart the eyes Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun. Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath His breast, and compass’d round about his brow With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light And alternation of all hues, he stood.
“O child of man, why muse you here alone Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old Which fill’d the Earth with passing loveliness, Which flung strange music on the howling winds, And odours rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality, Thy spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay: Open thine eye and see.” I look’d, but not Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light Of the great angel mind which look’d from out The starry glowing of his restless eyes. I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large With such a vast circumference of thought, That in my vanity I seem’d to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone Of full beautitude. Each failing sense
As with a momentary flash of light Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth, The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon’s white cities, and the opal width Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth Of her black hollows. The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful, Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light Blaze within blaze, an unimagin’d depth And harmony of planet-girded Suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel, Arch’d the wan Sapphire. Nay, the hum of men, Or other things talking in unknown tongues, And notes of busy life in distant worlds Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear. A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts Involving and embracing each with each
Rapid as fire, inextricably link’d, Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense, The issue of strong impulse, hurried through The riv’n rapt brain: as when in some large lake From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope At slender interval, the level calm
Is ridg’d with restless and increasing spheres Which break upon each other, each th’ effect Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong Than its precursor, till the eye in vain Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round.
I know not if I shape
These things with accurate similitude From visible objects, for but dimly now, Less vivid than a half-forgotten dream, The memory of that mental excellence
Comes o’er me, and it may be I entwine The indecision of my present mind
With its past clearness, yet it seems to me As even then the torrent of quick thought Absorbed me from the nature of itself
With its own fleetness. Where is he that borne Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge, And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws which regulate The fierceness of the bounding element? My thoughts which long had grovell’d in the slime Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some earth-awakening day of spring Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides Double display of starlit wings which burn Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom: E’en so my thoughts, ere while so low, now felt Unutterable buoyancy and strength
To bear them upward through the trackless fields Of undefin’d existence far and free.
Then first within the South methought I saw A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement
On battlement, and the Imperial height Of Canopy o’ercanopied.
Behind,
In diamond light, upsprung the dazzling Cones Of Pyramids, as far surpassing Earth’s
As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Each aloft Upon his narrow’d Eminence bore globes
Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. But the glory of the place Stood out a pillar’d front of burnish’d gold Interminably high, if gold it were
Or metal more ethereal, and beneath Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan Through length of porch and lake and boundless hall, Part of a throne of fiery flame, where from The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes That minister’d around it–if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain Stagger’d beneath the vision, and thick night Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.
With ministering hand he rais’d me up; Then with a mournful and ineffable smile, Which but to look on for a moment fill’d My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,
Like a swol’n river’s gushings in still night Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:
“There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway The heart of man: and teach him to attain By shadowing forth the Unattainable;
And step by step to scale that mighty stair Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds Of glory of Heaven. [1] With earliest Light of Spring, And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
And in red Autumn when the winds are wild With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs The headland with inviolate white snow, I play about his heart a thousand ways, Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears With harmonies of wind and wave and wood– Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters Betraying the close kisses of the wind– And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known A higher than they see: They with dim eyes Behold me darkling. Lo! I have given thee To understand my presence, and to feel
My fullness; I have fill’d thy lips with power. I have rais’d thee nigher to the Spheres of Heaven, Man’s first, last home: and thou with ravish’d sense Listenest the lordly music flowing from Th’illimitable years. I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through All th’ intricate and labyrinthine veins Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare, Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth: So that men’s hopes and fears take refuge in The fragrance of its complicated glooms And cool impleached twilights. Child of Man, See’st thou yon river, whose translucent wave, Forth issuing from darkness, windeth through The argent streets o’ the City, imaging The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes. Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm, Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells. Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite,
Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by, And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring To carry through the world those waves, which bore The reflex of my City in their depths.
Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais’d To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come When I must render up this glorious home To keen ‘Discovery’: soon yon brilliant towers Shall darken with the waving of her wand; Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts, Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand, Low-built, mud-wall’d, Barbarian settlement, How chang’d from this fair City!”
Thus far the Spirit: Then parted Heavenward on the wing: and I Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!
[Footnote 1: Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS OF 1842.
1830. Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. London: Effingham Wilson, 1830.
1832. Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 1833 (published at the end of 1832).
1837. In the ‘Keepsake’, an Annual, appears the poem “St. Agnes’ Eve,” afterwards republished in the Poems of 1842, as “St. Agnes”.
1842. ‘Morte d’Arthur, Dora, and other Idyls’. (Privately printed for the Author.)
1842. Poems. In 2 vols. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1842.
1843. ‘Id’. 2 vols. Second Edition, 1843.
1845. ‘Id’. Third Edition, 1845.
1846. ‘Id’. Fourth Edition, 1846.
1848. ‘Id.’ Fifth Edition, 1848.
1849. In the ‘Examiner’ for 24th March, 1849, appeared the poem “To—-, after reading a Life and Letters,” republished in the Sixth Edition of the Poems.
1850. Poems. 2 vols. Sixth Edition, 1850.
1851. In the ‘Keepsake’ appeared the verses: “Come not when I am Dead,” reprinted in the Seventh Edition of the Poems.
1851. Poems. Seventh Edition. London: Edward Moxon, 1851. i vol.
1853. ‘Id’. Eighth Edition, 1853. i vol.
1857. Poems by Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. With engraving of bust by Woolner, and illustrations by Thomas Creswick, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, William Macready, John Calcott Horsley, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Clarkson Stanfield, and Daniel Maclise. Pp. xiii., 375. London: Edward Moxon, 1857. 8vo.
1862. Poems MDCCCXXX, MDCCCXXXIII. Privately printed. This was suppressed by an injunction in Chancery. It was compiled and edited by Mr. Dykes Campbell for Camden Hotten.
1863. Poems by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L. I vol. Edward Moxon, 1863. (Recorded as being the Fifteenth Edition, but I have not seen any Edition between 1857 and this one.)
1865. A selection from the works of Alfred Tennyson. Poet Laureate. (Moxon’s Miniature Poets.) Edward Moxon & Co., 1865. Containing several minor alterations, and an additional couplet in the “Vision of Sin”.
1869. Pocket Edition of Complete Poems. Strahan, 1869. (I have not seen this, but it is entered in the London Catalogue.)
1870. ‘Id’. Post-Octavo, 1870 (entered in the London Catalogue).
1871. Miniature or Cabinet Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson, printed by Whittaker, Strahan & Co., 1871.
1871. Complete Works. Edited by A. C. Loffalt. Rotterdam: 12mo, 1871.
1872. Imperial Library Edition of the Works of Alfred Tennyson. In 6 vols. Strahan & Co., 1872.
1874-7. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. Cabinet edition in 10 vols. H.S.King. London: 1874-1877.
1875. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. 6 vols. H. S. King. 1875-77.
1875. The Author’s Edition in 4 vols. Henry S. King & Co. 1875.
1877. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. H. S. King. 7 vols. 1877, and in the same year by the same publisher the completion of the Miniature Edition.
1881. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. With portrait and illustrations, 1881. C. Kegan Paul & Co.
1884. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. Macmillan & Co., 1884. In the same year a school edition in four parts by the same publishers.
1885. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. Complete Edition. New York: T. Y. Cowell & Co., 1885.
1886. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. In 10 vols. Macmillan & Co., 1886.
1886-91. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. 12 vols. (The dramatic works in 4 vols.) 16 vols. 1886-91.
1889. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889.
1890. The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson. Pocket Edition, without the plays. London: Macmillan & Co., 1890.
1890. Selections. Edited by Rowe and Webb (frequently reprinted).
1891. Complete Works, i vol. Reprinted ten times between this date and November, 1899.
1891. Poetical Works. Miniature Edition. 12 vols.
1891. Tennyson for the Young, i vol. With introduction and notes by Alfred Ainger, reprinted six times between this date and 1899.
1893. Poems. Illustrated. I vol. (This contains the poems and illustrations of the Illustrated Edition published in 1857.)
1894. The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, with last alterations, etc. London: Macmillan & Co., 1894.
1895. The Poetical Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (without the plays). (The People’s Edition.) London: Macmillan & Co., 1895.
1896. ‘Id.’ Pocket Edition.
1898. The Life and Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (Edition de Luxe.) 12 vols. Macmillan & Co., 1898.
1899. The Works of Alfred Tennyson. 8 vols.
1899. Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Globe Edition. Macmillan. This Edition was supplied to Messrs. Warne and published by them as the Albion Edition.
1899. Poems including ‘In Memoriam’. Popular Edition, 1 vol.