The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 83

LOVE AND SORROW

O Maiden, fresher than the first green leaf With which the fearful springtide flecks the lea, Weep not, Almeida, that I said to thee That thou hast half my heart, for bitter grief Doth hold the other half in sovranty.

Thou art my heart's sun in love's crystalline: Yet on both sides at once thou canst not shine: Thine is the bright side of my heart, and thine My heart's day, but the shadow of my heart, Issue of its own substance, my heart's night Thou canst not lighten even with 'thy' light, All powerful in beauty as thou art.

Almeida, it my heart were substanceless, Then might thy rays pa.s.s thro' to the other side, So swiftly, that they nowhere would abide, But lose themselves in utter emptiness.

Half-light, half-shadow, let my spirit sleep; They never learnt to love who never knew to weep.

TO A LADY SLEEPING

O Thou whose fringed lids I gaze upon, Through whose dim brain the winged dreams are borne, Unroof the shrines of clearest vision, In honour of the silverflecked morn: Long hath the white wave of the virgin light Driven back the billow of the dreamful dark.

Thou all unwittingly prolongest night, Though long ago listening the poised lark, With eyes dropt downward through the blue serene, Over heaven's parapets the angels lean.

SONNET

Could I outwear my present state of woe With one brief winter, and indue i' the spring Hues of fresh youth, and mightily outgrow The wan dark coil of faded suffering-- Forth in the pride of beauty issuing A sheeny snake, the light of vernal bowers, Moving his crest to all sweet plots of flowers And watered vallies where the young birds sing; Could I thus hope my lost delights renewing, I straightly would commend the tears to creep From my charged lids; but inwardly I weep: Some vital heat as yet my heart is wooing: This to itself hath drawn the frozen rain From my cold eyes and melted it again.

SONNET

Though Night hath climbed her peak of highest noon, And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl, All night through archways of the bridged pearl And portals of pure silver walks the moon.

Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony, Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy, And dross to gold with glorious alchemy, Basing thy throne above the world's annoy.

Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee: So shalt thou pierce the woven glooms of truth; So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee; So in thine hour of dawn, the body's youth, An honourable old shall come upon thee.

SONNET

Shall the hag Evil die with child of Good, Or propagate again her loathed kind, Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood, Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?

Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat Of their broad vans, and in the solitude Of middle s.p.a.ce confound them, and blow back Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne!

So their wan limbs no more might come between The moon and the moon's reflex in the night; Nor blot with floating shades the solar light.

SONNET

The pallid thunderstricken sigh for gain, Down an ideal stream they ever float, And sailing on Pactolus in a boat, Drown soul and sense, while wistfully they strain Weak eyes upon the glistering sands that robe The understream. The wise could he behold Cathedralled caverns of thick-ribbed gold And branching silvers of the central globe, Would marvel from so beautiful a sight How scorn and ruin, pain and hate could flow: But Hatred in a gold cave sits below, Pleached with her hair, in mail of argent light Shot into gold, a snake her forehead clips And skins the colour from her trembling lips.

LOVE

I

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying love, Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near, Before the face of G.o.d didst breathe and move, Though night and pain and ruin and death reign here.

Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere, The very throne of the eternal G.o.d: Pa.s.sing through thee the edicts of his fear Are mellowed into music, borne abroad By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea, Even from his central deeps: thine empery Is over all: thou wilt not brook eclipse; Thou goest and returnest to His Lips Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.

II

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee Athwart the veils of evil which enfold thee.

We beat upon our aching hearts with rage; We cry for thee: we deem the world thy tomb.

As dwellers in lone planets look upon The mighty disk of their majestic sun, Hollowed in awful chasms of wheeling gloom, Making their day dim, so we gaze on thee.

Come, thou of many crowns, white-robed love, Oh! rend the veil in twain: all men adore thee; Heaven crieth after thee; earth waileth for thee: Breathe on thy winged throne, and it shall move In music and in light o'er land and sea.

III

And now--methinks I gaze upon thee now, As on a serpent in his agonies Awestricken Indians; what time laid low And crushing the thick fragrant reeds he lies, When the new year warm breathed on the earth, Waiting to light him with his purple skies, Calls to him by the fountain to uprise.

Already with the pangs of a new birth Strain the hot spheres of his convulsed eyes, And in his writhings awful hues begin To wander down his sable sheeny sides, Like light on troubled waters: from within Anon he rusheth forth with merry din, And in him light and joy and strength abides; And from his brows a crown of living light Looks through the thickstemmed woods by day and night.

THE KRAKEN

Reprinted without alteration, except in the spelling of "antient," among 'Juvenilia' in 1871 and onward.