The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 78

COME NOT, WHEN I AM DEAD...

First published in 'The Keepsake' for 1851.

Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.

There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. [1]

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest: Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, [2]

And I desire to rest.

Pa.s.s on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.

[Footnote 1: 'The Keepsake':--But go thou by.]

[Footnote 2: 'The Keepsake' has a small 't' for Time.]

THE EAGLE

{FRAGMENT}

First published in 1851. It has not been altered.

He clasps the crag with hooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; [1]

He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

[Footnote 1: One of Tennyson's most magically descriptive lines; nothing could exceed the vividness of the words "wrinkled" and "crawls" here.]

MOVE EASTWARD, HAPPY EARTH...

First published in 1842.

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow: From fringes of the faded eve, O, happy planet, eastward go; Till over thy dark shoulder glow Thy silver sister-world, and rise To gla.s.s herself in dewy eyes That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly [1] borne, Dip forward under starry light, And move me to my marriage-morn, And round again to happy night.

[Footnote 1: 1842 to 1853. Lightly.]

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK...

First published in 1842. No alteration.

This exquisite poem was composed in a very different scene from that to which it refers, namely in "a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning between blossoming hedges". See 'Life of Tennyson', vol. i., p.

223.

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

THE POET'S SONG

First published in 1842.

The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, He pa.s.s'd by the town and out of the street, A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, And waves of shadow went over the wheat, And he sat him down in a lonely place, And chanted a melody loud and sweet, That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud, And the lark drop down at his feet.

The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, [1]

The snake slipt under a spray, The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey, And the nightingale thought, "I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay, For he sings of what the world will be When the years have died away".

[Footnote 1: 1889, Fly.]