Tennyson and His Friends Part 7

She loveth her own anguish deep More than much pleasure. Let her will Be done--to weep or not to weep.

I will not say, "G.o.d's ordinance Of Death is blown in every wind"; For that is not a common chance That takes away a n.o.ble mind.

His memory long will live alone In all our hearts, as mournful light That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night.

Vain solace! Memory standing near Cast down her eyes, and in her throat Her voice seem'd distant, and a tear Dropt on the letters as I wrote.

I wrote I know not what. In truth, How _should_ I soothe you anyway, Who miss the brother of your youth?

Yet something I did wish to say:

For he too was a friend to me: Both are my friends, and my true breast Bleedeth for both; yet it may be That only silence suiteth best.

Words weaker than your grief would make Grief more. 'Twere better I should cease Although myself could almost take The place of him that sleeps in peace.

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.

TO EDWARD FITZGERALD

(Dedication of "Tiresias," written in 1882)

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, And greet it with a kindly smile; Whom yet I see as there you sit Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, And while your doves about you flit, And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, Or on your head their rosy feet, As if they knew your diet spares Whatever moved in that full sheet Let down to Peter at his prayers; Who live on milk and meal and gra.s.s; And once for ten long weeks I tried Your table of Pythagoras, And seem'd at first "a thing enskied"

(As Shakespeare has it) airy-light To float above the ways of men, Then fell from that half-spiritual height Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again One night when earth was winter-black, And all the heavens flash'd in frost; And on me, half-asleep, came back That wholesome heat the blood had lost, And set me climbing icy capes And glaciers, over which there roll'd To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold Without, and warmth within me, wrought To mould the dream; but none can say That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought, Who reads your golden Eastern lay, Than which I know no version done In English more divinely well; A planet equal to the sun Which cast it, that large infidel Your Omar; and your Omar drew Full-handed plaudits from our best In modern letters, and from two, Old friends outvaluing all the rest, Two voices heard on earth no more; But we old friends are still alive, And I am nearing seventy-four, While you have touch'd at seventy-five, And so I send a birthday line Of greeting; and my son, who dipt In some forgotten book of mine With sallow sc.r.a.ps of ma.n.u.script, And dating many a year ago, Has. .h.i.t on this, which you will take My Fitz, and welcome, as I know Less for its own than for the sake Of one recalling gracious times, When, in our younger London days, You found some merit in my rhymes, And I more pleasure in your praise.

EPILOGUE AT END OF "TIRESIAS"

"One height and one far-s.h.i.+ning fire"

And while I fancied that my friend For this brief idyll would require A less diffuse and opulent end, And would defend his judgment well, If I should deem it over nice-- The tolling of his funeral bell Broke on my Pagan Paradise, And mixt the dream of cla.s.sic times And all the phantoms of the dream, With present grief, and made the rhymes, That miss'd his living welcome, seem Like would-be guests an hour too late, Who down the highway moving on With easy laughter find the gate Is bolted, and the master gone.

Gone into darkness, that full light Of friends.h.i.+p! past, in sleep, away By night, into the deeper night!

The deeper night? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earth-- If night, what barren toil to be!

What life, so maim'd by night, were worth Our living out? Not mine to me Remembering all the golden hours Now silent, and so many dead, And him the last; and laying flowers, This wreath, above his honour'd head, And praying that, when I from hence Shall fade with him into the unknown, My close of earth's experience May prove as peaceful as his own.

TO JOHN MITCh.e.l.l KEMBLE

My hope and heart is with thee--thou wilt be A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest To scare church-harpies from the master's feast; Our dusted velvets have much need of thee: Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws, Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily; But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy To embattail and to wall about thy cause With iron-worded proof, hating to hark The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone Half G.o.d's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.

TO J. W. BLAKESLEY

AFTERWARDS DEAN OF LINCOLN

I

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn, Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain The knots that tangle human creeds, The wounding cords that bind and strain The heart until it bleeds, Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn Roof not a glance so keen as thine: If aught of prophecy be mine, Thou wilt not live in vain.

II

Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit; Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow: Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.

Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords Can do away that ancient lie; A gentler death shall Falsehood die, Shot thro' and thro' with cunning words.

III

Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok brook the livelong night, And heaven's mazed signs stood still In the dim tract of Penuel.

TO R. C. TRENCH

AFTERWARDS ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN

(Dedication of "The Palace of Art")

I send you here a sort of allegory, (For you will understand it) of a soul, A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts, A s.p.a.cious garden full of flowering weeds, A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain, That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind) And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good, Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters That doat upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof, And never can be sunder'd without tears.

And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie Howling in outer darkness. Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth Moulded by G.o.d, and temper'd with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man.

TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD

Brooks, for they call'd you so that knew you best, Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes, How oft we two have heard St. Mary's chimes!

How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest, Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!

How oft with him we paced that walk of limes, Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times, Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.

You man of humorous-melancholy mark, Dead of some inward agony--is it so?

Our kindlier, trustier, Jaques, past away!

I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark: [Greek: Skias onar]--dream of a shadow, go-- G.o.d bless you. I shall join you in a day.

TO EDMUND LUs.h.i.+NGTON

ON HIS MARRIAGE WITH CECILIA TENNYSON

O true and tried, so well and long, Demand not thou a marriage lay; In that it is thy marriage day Is music more than any song.

Nor have I felt so much of bliss Since first he told me that he loved A daughter of our house; nor proved Since that dark day a day like this;

Tho' I since then have number'd o'er Some thrice three years: they went and came, Remade the blood and changed the frame, And yet is love not less, but more;

No longer caring to embalm In dying songs a dead regret, But like a statue solid-set, And moulded in colossal calm.

Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater than before;

Which makes appear the songs I made As echoes out of weaker times, As half but idle brawling rhymes, The sport of random sun and shade.