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

The Works of Tennyson

The Eversley Edition: Annotated by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

POEMS

II.

POEMS

III.

ENOCH ARDEN AND IN MEMORIAM

VII.

THE PRINCESS AND MAUD

IDYLLS OF THE KING

III.

BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS

IV.

DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS

VIII.

QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD

IX.

BECKET AND OTHER PLAYS

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IV.

See, we were nursed in the drear night-fold of your fatalist creed,

In my boyhood I came across this Calvinist creed—and assuredly, however unfathomable the mystery, if one cannot believe in the freedom of the human will as of the divine, life is hardly worth the living.

And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn indeed,
When the light of a Sun that was coming would scatter the ghosts of the Past,
And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples would vanish at last,
And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and friend,
For He spoke, or it seem'd that He spoke, of a Hell without help, without end.