The Works of Tennyson :: :: University of Virginia Library

The child was sitting on the bank
Upon a stormy day.
He loved the river's roaring sound;
The river rose and burst his bound,
Flooded fifty leagues around,
Took the child from off the ground,
And bore the child away.

243

O the child so meek and wise,
Who made us wise and mild!
All was strife at home about him,
Nothing could be done without him;
Father, mother, sister, brother,
All accusing one another;
O to lose the child!

The river left the child unhurt,
But far within the wild.
Then we brought him home again,
Peace and order come again,
The river sought his bound again,
The child was lost and found again,
And we will keep the child.

[The Princess; A Medley.]

The doctor's Daughter

[Lines not used in the final version.]

Sweet Kitty Sandilands,
The daughter of the doctor,
We drest her in the Proctor's bands,
And past her for the Proctor.

All the men ran from her
That would have hasten'd to her,
All the men ran from her
That would have come to woo her.

Up the street we took her
As far as to the Castle,
Jauntily sat the Proctor's cap
And from it hung the tassel.

244

[The Princess; A Medley.]

Sir Ralph

[Lines not used in the final version.]

Ralph would fight in Edith's sight,
For Ralph was Edith's lover,
Ralph went down like a fire to the fight,
Struck to the left and struck to the right,
Roll'd them over and over.
‘Gallant Sir Ralph,’ said the king.

Casques were crack'd and hauberks hack'd,
Lances snapt in sunder,
Rang the stroke and sprang the blood,
Knights were thwack'd and riven, and hew'd
Like broad oaks with thunder.
‘O what an arm,’ said the king.

Edith bow'd her stately head,
Saw them lie confounded,
Edith Montfort bow'd her head,
Crown'd her knight's, and flush'd as red
As poppies when she crown'd it.
‘Take her, Sir Ralph,’ said the king.

So Lilia sang. I thought she was possess'd
She struck such warbling fire into the notes.

260

[The Princess; A Medley. Canto V]

[Lines not used in the final version.]

Lady, let the rolling drums
Beat to battle where thy warrior stands;
Now thy face across his fancy comes
And gives the battle to his hands.

Lady, let the trumpets blow,
Clasp thy little babes about thy knee:
Now their warrior father meets the foe
And strikes him dead for thine and thee.

263

[The Princess; A Medley. Canto VI]

[Lines not used in the final version.]

Home they brought him slain with spears,
They brought him home at even-fall;
All alone she sits and hears
Echoes in his empty Hall,
Sounding on the morrow.

The sun peep'd in from open field,
The boy began to leap and prance,
Rode upon his father's lance,
Beat upon his father's shield,
Oh hush my joy, my sorrow.

264

[The Princess; A Medley.]

[Lines not used in the final version.]

[_]

Lines omitted after line 10, p.119.

Go help the half-brain'd dwarf, Society,
To find low motives unto noble deeds,
To fix all doubt upon the darker side;

265

Go fitter thou for narrower neighbourhoods,
Old talker, haunt where gossip breeds and seethes
And festers in provincial sloth! and you
That think we sought to practise on a life
Risked for our own, and trusted to our hands,
What say you, Sir? you hear us; deem ye not
'Tis all too like that even now we scheme,
In one broad death confounding friend and foe,
To drug them all? revolve it; you are man,
And therefore no doubt wise; but after this
We brook no further insult but are gone.

269

[The Princess; A Medley.]

CONCLUSION

[Lines not used in the final version.]

[_]

These lines were omitted, and the forty-six lines (pp. 140-42), who might have told to garden rails, were inserted, written just after the disturbances in France, February 1848, when Louis Philippe was compelled to abdicate.

who there bean
A treatise growing with it, and might have flow'd
In axiom worther to be graven on rock
Than all that lasts of old world hieroglyph,
Or lichen-fretted Rune and arrowhead!
But that there rose a shout; the gates were closed

276

At sundown, and the crowd were swarming now,
To take their leave, about the garden rails,
And I and some went out, and mingled with them.

275

[Maud; A Monodrama.]

[Lines not used in the final version.]

[_]

P. 174 X. Verse iii. This was originally verse iii.

Will she smile if he presses her hand,
This lord-captain up at the Hall?
Captain! he to hold a command!
He can hold a cue, he can pocket a ball;
And sure not a bantam cockerel lives
With a weaker crow upon English land,
Whether he boast of a horse that gains,
Or cackle his own applause....
What use for a single mouth to rage
At the rotten creak of the State-machine;
Tho' it makes friends weep and enemies smile,
That here in the face of a watchful age,
The sons of a gray-beard-ridden isle
Should dance in a round of an old routine.