A memoir by Hallam Tennyson (1897) :: :: University of Virginia Library

I. VOLUME I

[Thy soul is like a landskip, friend]

[_]

(Unpublished.)

Thy soul is like a landskip, friend,
Steeple, and stream, and forest lawn,
Most delicately overdrawn
With the first twilight of the even,
Clear-edged, and showing every bend
Of each dark hill against the Heaven,
Nor wanting many a sombre mound,
Stately and mild, and all between
Valleys full of solemn sound,
And hoary holts on uplands green,
And somewhat loftier antient heights
Touch'd with Heaven's latest lights.

Anacaona.

1

A dark Indian maiden,
Warbling in the bloom'd liana,
Stepping lightly flower-laden,
By the crimson-eyed anana,
Wantoning in orange groves
Naked, and dark-limb'd, and gay,
Bathing in the slumbrous coves,
In the cocoa-shadow'd coves,
Of sunbright Xaraguay,
Who was so happy as Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti?

2

All her loving childhood
Breezes from the palm and canna
Fann'd this queen of the green wildwood,
Lady of the green Savannah:
All day long with laughing eyes,
Dancing by a palmy bay,
In the wooded paradise,
The cedar-wooded paradise
Of still Xaraguay:
None were so happy as Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti!

3

In the purple island,
Crown'd with garlands of cinchona,
Lady over wood and highland,
The Indian queen, Anacaona,
Dancing on the blossomy plain
To a woodland melody:
Playing with the scarlet crane,
The dragon-fly and scarlet crane,
Beneath the papao tree!
Happy happy was Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti!

4

The white man's white sail, bringing
To happy Hayti the new-comer,
Over the dark sea-marge springing,
Floated in the silent summer:
Then she brought the guava fruit,
With her maidens to the bay;
She gave them the yuccaroot,
Maizebread and the yuccaroot,
Of sweet Xaraguay:
Happy, happy Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti!

5

Naked, without fear, moving
To her Areyto's mellow ditty,
Waving a palm branch, wondering, loving,
Carolling “Happy, happy Hayti!”
She gave the white men welcome all,
With her damsels by the bay;

For they were fair-faced and tall,
They were more fair-faced and tall,
Than the men of Xaraguay,
And they smiled on Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti!

6

Following her wild carol
She led them down the pleasant places,
For they were kingly in apparel,
Loftily stepping with fair faces.
But never more upon the shore
Dancing at the break of day,
In the deep wood no more,—
By the deep sea no more,—
No more in Xaraguay
Wander'd happy Anacaona,
The beauty of Espagnola,
The golden flower of Hayti!

The Lark.

Full light aloft doth the laverock spring
From under the deep, sweet corn,
And chants in the golden wakening
Athwart the bloomy morn.
What aileth thee, O bird divine,
That thou singest with main and with might?
Is thy mad brain drunk with the merry, red wine,
At the very break of light?
It is not good to drink strong wine
Ere the day be well-nigh done;
But thou hast drunk of the merry, sweet wine,
At the rising of the sun.

[Life of the Life within my blood]

Life of the Life within my blood,
Light of the Light within mine eyes,
The May begins to breathe and bud,
And softly blow the balmy skies;
Bathe with me in the fiery flood,
And mingle kisses, tears, and sighs,
Life of the Life within my blood,
Light of the Light within mine eyes.

To Poesy.

O God, make this age great that we may be
As giants in Thy praise! and raise up Mind,
Whose trumpet-tongued, aerial melody
May blow alarum loud to every wind,
And startle the dull ears of human kind!
Methinks I see the world's renewed youth
A long day's dawn, when Poesy shall bind
Falsehood beneath the altar of great Truth:
The clouds are sunder'd toward the morning-rise;
Slumber not now, gird up thy loins for fight,
And get thee forth to conquer. I, even I,
Am large in hope that these expectant eyes
Shall drink the fulness of thy victory,
Tho' thou art all unconscious of thy Might.

[Check every outflash, every ruder sally]

Check every outflash, every ruder sally
Of thought and speech, speak low, and give up wholly
Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy:
This is the place. Thro' yonder poplar alley,
Below, the blue green river windeth slowly,
But in the middle of the sombre valley,
The crisped waters whisper musically,
And all the haunted place is dark and holy.
The nightingale, with long and low preamble,
Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,
And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches
The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,
And all the white-stemm'd pinewood slept above,
When in this valley first I told my love.

112

Youth.

I

Youth, lapsing thro' fair solitudes,
Pour'd by long glades and meadowy mounds,
Crown'd with soft shade her deepening floods
That wash'd her shores with blissful sounds:

Her silver eddies in their play
Drove into lines and studs of light
The image of the sun by day,
The image of the moon by night.

The months, ere they began to rise,
Sent thro' my blood a prophet voice
Before the first white butterflies,
And where the secret streams rejoice.

I heard Spring laugh in hidden rills,
Summer thro' all her sleepy leaves
Murmur'd: a voice ran round the hills
When corny Lammas bound the sheaves:

A voice, when night had crept on high,
To snowy crofts and winding scars,
Rang like a trumpet clear and dry,
And shook the frosty winter stars.

When I was somewhat older grown
These voices did not cease to cry,
Only they took a sweeter tone,
But did not sound so joyfully:

Lower and deeper evermore
They grew, and they began at last
To speak of what had gone before,
And how all things become the past.

113

Life, to this wind, turn'd all her vanes,
Moan'd in her chimneys and her eaves;
I grieved as woods in dripping rains
Sigh over all their fallen leaves;

Beside my door at morning stood
The tearful spirit of the time;
He moan'd, “I wander from my good!”
He chanted some old doleful rhyme.

So lived I without aim or choice,
Still humming snatches of old song,
Till suddenly a sharper voice
Cried in the future “Come along.”

When to this sound my face I turn'd,
Intent to follow on the track,
Again the low sweet voices mourn'd
In distant fields, “Come back, come back.”

Confused, and ceasing from my quest,
I loiter'd in the middle way,
So pausing 'twixt the East and West,
I found the Present where I stay:

Now idly in my natal bowers,
Unvext by doubts I cannot solve,
I sit among the scentless flowers
And see and hear the world revolve:

Yet well I know that nothing stays,
And I must traverse yonder plain:
Sooner or later from the haze
The second voice will peal again.

114

II

A rumour of a mystery,
A noise of winds that meet and blend,
An energy, an agony,
A labour working to an end.

Now shall I rest or shall I rise?
It is the early morning, Hark!
A voice like many voices cries,
Comes hither throbbing thro' the dark;

Now one faint line of light doth glow,
I follow to the morning sun,
Behind yon hill the trumpets blow,
And there is something greatly done:

The voice cries “Come.” Upon the brink
A solitary fortress burns,
And shadows strike and shadows sink,
And Heaven is dark and bright by turns.

“Come” and I come, the wind is strong:
Hush! there floats upward from the gulf
A murmur of heroic song,
A howling of the mountain wolf;

A tempest strikes the craggy walls,
Faint shouts are heard across the glen,
A moan of many waterfalls,
And in the pauses groans of men.

“Come” and I come, no more I sleep:
The thunder cannot make thee dumb;
“Come” and I come, the vale is deep,
My heart is dark, but yet I come.

115

Up hither have I found my way,
The latest thunder-peal hath peal'd,
Down from the summit sweeps the day
And rushes o'er a boundless field.

Out bursts a rainbow in the sky—
Away with shadows! On they move!
Beneath those double arches lie
Fair with green fields the realms of Love.

The whole land glitters after rain,
Thro' wooded isles the river shines,
The casements sparkle on the plain,
The towers gleam among the vines;

“Come” and I come, and all comes back
Which in that early voice was sweet,
Yet am I dizzy in the track,
A light wind wafts me from my feet.

Warm beats my blood, my spirit thirsts;
Fast by me flash the cloudy streaks,
And from the golden vapour bursts
A mountain bright with triple peaks:

With all his groves he bows, he nods,
The clouds unswathe them from the height,
And there sit figures as of Gods
Ray'd round with beams of living light.

124

The Mother's Ghost.

Not a whisper stirs the gloom,
It will be the dawning soon,
We may glide from room to room,
In the glimmer of the moon:
Every heart is lain to rest,
All the house is fast in sleep,
Were I not a spirit blest,
Sisters, I could almost weep!

In that cradle sleeps my child,
She whose birth brought on my bliss:
On her forehead undefiled
I will print an airy kiss:

125

See, she dreameth happy dreams,
Her hands are folded quietly,
Like to one of us she seems,
One of us my child will be.

134

Mine Host.

[_]

(Unpublished.)

Yon huddled cloud his motion shifts,
Where, by the tavern in the dale,
The thirsty horseman, nodding, lifts
The creaming horn of corny ale!

This tavern is their chief resort,
For he, whose cellar is his pride,
Gives stouter ale and riper port
Than any in the country-side.

135

Mine host is fat, and gray, and wise,
He strokes his beard before he speaks;
And when he laughs, his little eyes
Are swallow'd in his pamper'd cheeks.

He brims his beaker to the top,
With jokes you never heard before,
And sometimes with a twinkling drop,
“To those who will not taste it more!”

145

Whispers.

'Tis not alone the warbling woods,
The starr'd abysses of the sky,
The silent hills, the stormy floods,
The green that fills the eye—
These only do not move the breast;
Like some wise artist, Nature gives,
Thro' all her works, to each that lives
A hint of somewhat unexprest.
Whate'er I see, where'er I move,
These whispers rise, and fall away,
Something of pain—of bliss—of Love,
But what, were hard to say.

146

The Little Maid.

Along this glimmering gallery
A child she loved to play;
This chamber she was born in! See,
The cradle where she lay!

That little garden was her pride,
With yellow groundsel grown!
Those holly-thickets only hide
Her grave—a simple stone!

159

To a friend, Mrs Neville,

who had lately lost her husband

[_]

(written between 1830 and 1840, unpublished).

Woman of noble form and noble mind!
Whithersoever thro' the wilderness
Thou bearest from the threshold of thy friends
The sacred sorrows of as pure a heart
As e'er beat time to Nature, take with thee
Our warmest wishes, silent Guardians
But true till Death; and let them go in hope,
Like birds of passage, to return with thee
Some happy Summer morning, when the winds
Are fallen or changed; and, water'd by thy tears,
The two fair lilies growing at thy side
Have slowly prosper'd into stately flowers.

161

[That the voice of a satisfied people may keep]

[_]

(Unpublished.)

That the voice of a satisfied people may keep
A sound in her ears like the sound of the deep,
Like the sound of the deep when the winds are asleep;
Here's a health to the Queen of the Isles.

Sonnet.

[To thee with whom my true affections dwell]

[_]

(Unpublished.)

To thee with whom my true affections dwell,
That I was harsh to thee, let no one know;
It were, O Heaven, a stranger tale to tell
Than if the vine had borne the bitter sloe.
Tho' I was harsh, my nature is not so:
A momentary cloud upon me fell:
My coldness was mistimed like summer-snow,
Cold words I spoke, yet loved thee warm and well.
Was I so harsh? Ah dear, it could not be.
Seem'd I so cold? what madness moved my blood

162

To make me thus belie my constant heart
That watch't with love thine earliest infancy,
Slow-ripening to the grace of womanhood,
Thro' every change that made thee what thou art?

199

The Ante-Chamber.

[_]

(Unpublished.)

That is his portrait painted by himself.
Look on those manly curls so glossy dark,
Those thoughtful furrows in the swarthy cheek;
Admire that stalwart shape, those ample brows,
And that large table of the breast dispread,
Between low shoulders; how demure a smile,
How full of wisest humour and of love,
With some half-consciousness of inward power,
Sleeps round those quiet lips; not quite a smile;
And look you what an arch the brain has built
Above the ear! and what a settled mind,
Mature, harbour'd from change, contemplative,
Tempers the peaceful light of hazel eyes,
Observing all things. This is he I loved,
This is the man of whom you heard me speak.

My fancy was the more luxurious,
But his was minted in a deeper mould,
And took in more of Nature than mine own:
Nor proved I such delight as he, to mark
The humours of the polling and the wake,
The hubbub of the market and the booths:
How this one smiled, that other waved his arms,
These careful and those candid brows, how each—
Down to his slightest turns and attitudes—
Was something that another could not be,
How every brake and flower spread and rose,
A various world! which he compell'd once more
Thro' his own nature, with well mingled hues,

200

Into another shape, born of the first,
As beautiful, but yet another world.

All this so stirr'd him in his hour of joy,
Mix'd with the phantom of his coming fame,
That once he spake: “I lift the eyes of thought,
I look thro' all my glimmering life, I see
At the end, as 'twere athwart a colour'd cloud,
O'er the bow'd shoulder of a bland old Age,
The face of placid Death.” Long, Eustace, long
May my strong wish, transgressing the low bound
Of mortal hope, act on Eternity
To keep thee here amongst us! Yet he lives;
His and my friendship have not suffer'd loss,
His fame is equal to his years: his praise
Is neither overdealt, nor idly won.

Step thro' these doors, and I will show to you
Another countenance, one yet more dear,
More dear, for what is lost is made more dear;
“More dear” I will not say, but rather bless
The All-perfect Framer, Him, who made the heart,
Forethinking its twinfold necessity,
Thro' one whole life an overflowing urn,
Capacious both of Friendship and of Love.

248

The Doctor's Daughter.

[_]

(Unpublished.)

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.