The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 60

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me--to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, What is fine within thee growing coa.r.s.e to sympathise with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his pa.s.sion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought: Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand-- Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

Well--'tis well that I should bl.u.s.ter!--Hadst thou less unworthy proved-- Would to G.o.d--for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom, tho' my heart be at the root.

Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home. [6]

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?

Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish'd: sweetly did she speak and move: Such a one do I remember, whom to look it was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?

No--she never loved me truly: love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow [7] is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pa.s.s before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whisper'd by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry, 'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest.

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.

Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little h.o.a.rd of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings--she herself was not exempt-- Truly, she herself had suffer'd"--Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it--lower yet--be happy! wherefore should I care, I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.

Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; [8]

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; [9]

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; [10]

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; [10]

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunderstorm; [10]

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. [10]