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IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.
[Arthur Hugh Hallam]
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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- XXI.
- I sing to him that rests below,
- And, since the grasses round me wave,
- I take the grasses of the grave,
- And make them pipes whereon to blow.
- The traveller hears me now and then,
- And sometimes harshly will he speak:
- 'This fellow would make weakness weak,
- And melt the waxen hearts of men.'
- Another answers, 'Let him be,
- He loves to make parade of pain,
- That with his piping he may gain
- The praise that comes to constancy.'
- A third is wroth: 'Is this an hour
- For private sorrow's barren song,
- When more and more the people throng
- The chairs and thrones of civil power?
- 'A time to sicken and to swoon,
- When Science reaches forth her arms
- To feel from world to world, and charms
- Her secret from the latest moon?'
- Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
- Ye never knew the sacred dust:
- I do but sing because I must,
- And pipe but as the linnets sing:
- And one is glad; her note is gay,
- For now her little ones have ranged;
- And one is sad; her note is changed,
- Because her brood is stol'n away.
- XXII.
- The path by which we twain did go,
- Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
- Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
- From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
- And we with singing cheer'd the way,
- And, crown'd with all the season lent,
- From April on to April went,
- And glad at heart from May to May:
- But where the path we walk'd began
- To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
- As we descended following Hope,
- There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;
- Who broke our fair companionship,
- And spread his mantle dark and cold,
- And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
- And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,
- And bore thee where I could not see
- Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
- And think, that somewhere in the waste
- The Shadow sits and waits for me.
- XXIII.
- Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
- Or breaking into song by fits,
- Alone, alone, to where he sits,
- The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot,
- Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
- I wander, often falling lame,
- And looking back to whence I came,
- Or on to where the pathway leads;
- And crying, How changed from where it ran
- Thro' lands where not a leaf was dumb;
- But all the lavish hills would hum
- The murmur of a happy Pan:
- When each by turns was guide to each,
- And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
- And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
- Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
- And all we met was fair and good,
- And all was good that Time could bring,
- And all the secret of the Spring
- Moved in the chambers of the blood;
- And many an old philosophy
- On Argive heights divinely sang,
- And round us all the thicket rang
- To many a flute of Arcady.
- XXIV.
- And was the day of my delight
- As pure and perfect as I say?
- The very source and fount of Day
- Is dash'd with wandering isles of night.
- If all was good and fair we met,
- This earth had been the Paradise
- It never look'd to human eyes
- Since our first Sun arose and set.
- And is it that the haze of grief
- Makes former gladness loom so great?
- The lowness of the present state,
- That sets the past in this relief?
- Or that the past will always win
- A glory from its being far;
- And orb into the perfect star
- We saw not, when we moved therein?
- XXV.
- I know that this was Life,-the track
- Whereon with equal feet we fared;
- And then, as now, the day prepared
- The daily burden for the back.
- But this it was that made me move
- As light as carrier-birds in air;
- I loved the weight I had to bear,
- Because it needed help of Love:
- Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
- When mighty Love would cleave in twain
- The lading of a single pain,
- And part it, giving half to him.
- XXVI.
- Still onward winds the dreary way;
- I with it; for I long to prove
- No lapse of moons can canker Love,
- Whatever fickle tongues may say.
- And if that eye which watches guilt
- And goodness, and hath power to see
- Within the green the moulder'd tree,
- And towers fall'n as soon as built-
- Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
- Or see (in Him is no before)
- In more of life true life no more
- And Love the indifference to be,
- Then might I find, ere yet the morn
- Breaks hither over Indian seas,
- That Shadow waiting with the keys,
- To shroud me from my proper scorn.
- XXVII.
- I envy not in any moods
- The captive void of noble rage,
- The linnet born within the cage,
- That never knew the summer woods:
- I envy not the beast that takes
- His license in the field of time,
- Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
- To whom a conscience never wakes;
- Nor, what may count itself as blest,
- The heart that never plighted troth
- But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
- Nor any want-begotten rest.
- I hold it true, whate'er befall;
- I feel it, when I sorrow most;
- 'Tis better to have loved and lost
- Than never to have loved at all.
- XXVIII.
- The time draws near the birth of Christ:
- The moon is hid; the night is still;
- The Christmas bells from hill to hill
- Answer each other in the mist.
- Four voices of four hamlets round,
- From far and near, on mead and moor,
- Swell out and fail, as if a door
- Were shut between me and the sound:
- Each voice four changes on the wind,
- That now dilate, and now decrease,
- Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
- Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
- This year I slept and woke with pain,
- I almost wish'd no more to wake,
- And that my hold on life would break
- Before I heard those bells again:
- But they my troubled spirit rule,
- For they controll'd me when a boy;
- They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,
- The merry merry bells of Yule.
- XXIX.
- With such compelling cause to grieve
- As daily vexes household peace,
- And chains regret to his decease,
- How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
- Which brings no more a welcome guest
- To enrich the threshold of the night
- With shower'd largess of delight
- In dance and song and game and jest?
- Yet go, and while the holly boughs
- Entwine the cold baptismal font,
- Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
- That guard the portals of the house;
- Old sisters of a day gone by,
- Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
- Why should they miss their yearly due
- Before their time? They too will die.
- XXX.
- With trembling fingers did we weave
- The holly round the Christmas hearth;
- A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
- And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
- At our old pastimes in the hall
- We gambol'd, making vain pretence
- Of gladness, with an awful sense
- Of one mute Shadow watching all.
- We paused: the winds were in the beech:
- We heard them sweep the winter land;
- And in a circle hand-in-hand
- Sat silent, looking each at each.
- Then echo-like our voices rang;
- We sung, tho' every eye was dim,
- A merry song we sang with him
- Last year: impetuously we sang:
- We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
- Upon us: surely rest is meet:
- 'They rest,' we said, 'their sleep is sweet,'
- And silence follow'd, and we wept.
- Our voices took a higher range;
- Once more we sang: 'They do not die
- Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
- Nor change to us, although they change;
- 'Rapt from the fickle and the frail
- With gather'd power, yet the same,
- Pierces the keen seraphic flame
- From orb to orb, from veil to veil.'
- Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
- Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
- O Father, touch the east, and light
- The light that shone when Hope was born.
- XXXI.
- When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
- And home to Mary's house return'd,
- Was this demanded-if he yearn'd
- To hear her weeping by his grave?
- 'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
- There lives no record of reply,
- Which telling what it is to die
- Had surely added praise to praise.
- From every house the neighbours met,
- The streets were fill'd with joyful sound,
- A solemn gladness even crown'd
- The purple brows of Olivet.
- Behold a man raised up by Christ!
- The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
- He told it not; or something seal'd
- The lips of that Evangelist.
- XXXII.
- Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
- Nor other thought her mind admits
- But, he was dead, and there he sits,
- And he that brought him back is there.
- Then one deep love doth supersede
- All other, when her ardent gaze
- Roves from the living brother's face,
- And rests upon the Life indeed.
- All subtle thought, all curious fears,
- Borne down by gladness so complete,
- She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet
- With costly spikenard and with tears.
- Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
- Whose loves in higher love endure;
- What souls possess themselves so pure,
- Or is there blessedness like theirs?
- XXXIII.
- O thou that after toil and storm
- Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,
- Whose faith has centre everywhere,
- Nor cares to fix itself to form,
- Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
- Her early Heaven, her happy views;
- Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
- A life that leads melodious days.
- Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
- Her hands are quicker unto good:
- Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
- To which she links a truth divine!
- See thou, that countest reason ripe
- In holding by the law within,
- Thou fail not in a world of sin,
- And ev'n for want of such a type.
- XXXIV.
- My own dim life should teach me this,
- That life shall live for evermore,
- Else earth is darkness at the core,
- And dust and ashes all that is;
- This round of green, this orb of flame,
- Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
- In some wild Poet, when he works
- Without a conscience or an aim.
- What then were God to such as I?
- 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
- Of things all mortal, or to use
- A little patience ere I die;
- 'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
- Like birds the charming serpent draws,
- To drop head-foremost in the jaws
- Of vacant darkness and to cease.
- XXXV.
- Yet if some voice that man could trust
- Should murmur from the narrow house,
- 'The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
- Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:'
- Might I not say? 'Yet even here,
- But for one hour, O Love, I strive
- To keep so sweet a thing alive:'
- But I should turn mine ears and hear
- The moanings of the homeless sea,
- The sound of streams that swift or slow
- Draw down Ĉonian hills, and sow
- The dust of continents to be;
- And Love would answer with a sigh,
- 'The sound of that forgetful shore
- Will change my sweetness more and more,
- Half-dead to know that I shall die.'
- O me, what profits it to put
- And idle case? If Death were seen
- At first as Death, Love had not been,
- Or been in narrowest working shut,
- Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
- Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
- Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape,
- And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.
- XXXVI.
- Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,
- Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
- We yield all blessing to the name
- Of Him that made them current coin;
- For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
- Where truth in closest words shall fail,
- When truth embodied in a tale
- Shall enter in at lowly doors.
- And so the Word had breath, and wrought
- With human hands the creed of creeds
- In loveliness of perfect deeds,
- More strong than all poetic thought;
- Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
- Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
- And those wild eyes that watch the wave
- In roarings round the coral reef.
- XXXVII.
- Urania speaks with darken'd brow:
- 'Thou pratest here where thou art least;
- This faith has many a purer priest,
- And many an abler voice than thou.
- 'Go down beside thy native rill,
- On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
- And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
- About the ledges of the hill.'
- And my Melpomene replies,
- A touch of shame upon her cheek:
- 'I am not worthy ev'n to speak
- Of thy prevailing mysteries;
- 'For I am but an earthly Muse,
- And owning but a little art
- To lull with song an aching heart,
- And render human love his dues;
- 'But brooding on the dear one dead,
- And all he said of things divine,
- (And dear to me as sacred wine
- To dying lips is all he said),
- 'I murmur'd, as I came along,
- Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd;
- And loiter'd in the master's field,
- And darken'd sanctities with song.'
- XXXVIII.
- With weary steps I loiter on,
- Tho' always under alter'd skies
- The purple from the distance dies,
- My prospect and horizon gone.
- No joy the blowing season gives,
- The herald melodies of spring,
- But in the songs I love to sing
- A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
- If any care for what is here
- Survive in spirits render'd free,
- Then are these songs I sing of thee
- Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
- XXXIX.
- Old warder of these buried bones,
- And answering now my random stroke
- With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
- Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
- And dippest toward the dreamless head,
- To thee too comes the golden hour
- When flower is feeling after flower;
- But Sorrow-fixt upon the dead,
- And darkening the dark graves of men,-
- What whisper'd from her lying lips?
- Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
- And passes into gloom again.
- XL.
- Could we forget the widow'd hour
- And look on Spirits breathed away,
- As on a maiden in the day
- When first she wears her orange-flower!
- When crown'd with blessing she doth rise
- To take her latest leave of home,
- And hopes and light regrets that come
- Make April of her tender eyes;
- And doubtful joys the father move,
- And tears are on the mother's face,
- As parting with a long embrace
- She enters other realms of love;
- Her office there to rear, to teach,
- Becoming as is meet and fit
- A link among the days, to knit
- The generations each with each;
- And, doubtless, unto thee is given
- A life that bears immortal fruit
- In those great offices that suit
- The full-grown energies of heaven.
- Ay me, the difference I discern!
- How often shall her old fireside
- Be cheer'd with tidings of the bride,
- How often she herself return,
- And tell them all they would have told,
- And bring her babe, and make her boast,
- Till even those that miss'd her most
- Shall count new things as dear as old:
- But thou and I have shaken hands,
- Till growing winters lay me low;
- My paths are in the fields I know,
- And thine in undiscover'd lands.
to Verse XLI.
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