Слике страница
PDF
ePub

TO THE QUEEN

This poem was prefixed to the first Laureate Edition (1851), where it included the 'Crystal-Palace' stanza (see Notes) omitted in all subsequent editions. The 4th stanza was inserted in the next edition, and a few slight changes were made elsewhere.

[blocks in formation]

And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet

'By shaping some august decree

Which kept her throne unshaken still, Broad-based upon her people's will, And compass'd by the inviolate sea! March, 1851.

JUVENILIA

Under this head, in the one-volume and seven-volume editions of 1884 and all subsequent editions, Lord Tennyson included certain poems from the volumes of 1830 and 1833 (some of which were suppressed in 1842), with others that had not appeared in any earlier authorized edition of his works. For those not printed in 1830 (or then printed, and afterwards suppressed for a time) see the prefatory notes to the poems. All those without prefatory notes (or reference in other notes) were printed in 1830 and reprinted in 1842.

[blocks in formation]

When will the wind be aweary of blowing

Over the sky?

When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And nature die?

Never, O, never, nothing will die;
The stream flows,
The wind blows,

The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;
All things will change
Thro' eternity.

'Tis the world's winter;
Autumn and summer
Are gone long ago;
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro',

Here and there,
Till the air

And the ground

Shall be fill'd with life anew.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;

For even and morn

Ever will be
Thro' eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

[blocks in formation]

Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!

Death waits at the door.
See our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call'd — we must go.
Laid low, very low,

In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.

[blocks in formation]

LEONINE ELEGIACS

LOW-FLOWING breezes are roaming the broad valley dimm'd in the gloam

ing;

Thoro' the black-stemm'd pines only the far river shines.

Creeping thro' blossomy rushes and bowers of rose-blowing bushes,

Down by the poplar tall rivulets babble and fall.

Barketh the shepherd-dog cheerly; the grasshopper carolleth clearly; Deeply the wood-dove coos; shrilly the owlet halloos;

Winds creep; dews fall chilly: in her first sleep earth breathes stilly:

Over the pools in the burn water-gnats murmur and mourn.

Sadly the far kine loweth; the glimmering water outfloweth;

Twin peaks shadow'd with pine slope to the dark hyaline.

Low-throned Hesper is stayed between the two peaks; but the Naiad

Throbbing in mild unrest holds him beneath in her breast.

The ancient poetess singeth that Hesperus all things bringeth,

Smoothing the wearied mind: bring me my love, Rosalind.

Thou comest morning or even; she cometh not morning or even.

False-eyed Hesper, unkind, where is my sweet Rosalind ?

SUPPOSED CONFESSIONS

OF A SECOND-RATE SENSITIVE MIND

This poem, published in 1830, was suppressed for more than fifty years. In 1879 the Christian Signal,' an English journal, announced that its issue for September 6th would contain

an early unpublished poem of over two hundred lines by Alfred Tennyson (P. L.), entitled "Confessions of a Sensitive Mind; but the publication was prevented by a legal injunction. In 1884 the poem was included in the complete edition of the Laureate's works.

O GOD! my God! have mercy now. I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou Didst die for me, for such as me,

« ПретходнаНастави »