The Works of Tennyson The Eversley Edition: Annotated by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson |
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The Works of Tennyson | ||
211
II.
In Brittany. The shell undestroyed amid the storm perhaps symbolises to him his own first and highest nature preserved amid the storms of passion.
I.
See what a lovely shell,Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!
II.
What is it? a learned manCould give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.
III.
The tiny cell is forlorn,Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
212
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?
IV.
Slight, to be crush'd with a tapOf my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!
V.
Breton, not Briton; hereLike a shipwreck'd man on a coast
Of ancient fable and fear—
Plagued with a flitting to and fro,
A disease, a hard mechanic ghost
That never came from on high
Nor ever arose from below,
But only moves with the moving eye,
Flying along the land and the main—
Why should it look like Maud?
213
By what I cannot but know
Is a juggle born of the brain?
VI.
Back from the Breton coast,Sick of a nameless fear,
Back to the dark sea-line
Looking, thinking of all I have lost;
An old song vexes my ear;
But that of Lamech is mine.
VII.
For years, a measureless ill,For years, for ever, to part—
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.
VIII.
Strange, that the mind, when fraughtWith a passion so intense
214
Might drown all life in the eye,—
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!
And now I remember, I,
When he lay dying there,
I noticed one of his many rings
(For he had many, poor worm) and thought
It is his mother's hair.
IX.
Who knows if he be dead?Whether I need have fled?
Am I guilty of blood?
However this may be,
Comfort her, comfort her, all things good,
While I am over the sea!
Let me and my passionate love go by,
But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me!
Me and my harmful love go by;
But come to her waking, find her asleep,
Powers of the height, Powers of the deep,
And comfort her tho' I die.
The Works of Tennyson | ||