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IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.
[Arthur Hugh Hallam]
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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- LXI.
- If, in thy second state sublime,
- Thy ransom'd reason change replies
- With all the circle of the wise,
- The perfect flower of human time;
- And if thou cast thine eyes below,
- How dimly character'd and slight,
- How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night,
- How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
- Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
- Where thy first form was made a man:
- I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
- The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
- LXII.
- Tho' if an eye that's downward cast
- Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
- Then be my love an idle tale,
- And fading legend of the past;
- And thou, as one that once declined,
- When he was little more than boy,
- On some unworthy heart with joy,
- But lives to wed an equal mind;
- And breathes a novel world, the while
- His other passion wholly dies,
- Or in the light of deeper eyes
- Is matter for a flying smile.
- LXIII.
- Yet pity for a horse o'er-driven,
- And love in which my hound has part,
- Can hang no weight upon my heart
- In its assumptions up to heaven;
- And I am so much more than these,
- As thou, perchance, art more than I,
- And yet I spare them sympathy,
- And I would set their pains at ease.
- So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
- As, unto vaster motions bound,
- The circuits of thine orbit round
- A higher height, a deeper deep.
- LXIV.
- Dost thou look back on what hath been,
- As some divinely gifted man,
- Whose life in low estate began
- And on a simple village green;
- Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
- And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
- And breasts the blows of circumstance,
- And grapples with his evil star;
- Who makes by force his merit known
- And lives to clutch the golden keys,
- To mould a mighty state's decrees,
- And shape the whisper of the throne;
- And moving up from high to higher,
- Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
- The pillar of a people's hope,
- The centre of a world's desire;
- Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
- When all his active powers are still,
- A distant dearness in the hill,
- A secret sweetness in the stream,
- The limit of his narrower fate,
- While yet beside its vocal springs
- He play'd at counsellors and kings,
- With one that was his earliest mate;
- Who ploughs with pain his native lea
- And reaps the labour of his hands,
- Or in the furrow musing stands;
- 'Does my old friend remember me?'
- LXV.
- Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
- I lull a fancy trouble-tost
- With 'Love's too precious to be lost,
- A little grain shall not be spilt.'
- And in that solace can I sing,
- Till out of painful phases wrought
- There flutters up a happy thought,
- Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:
- Since we deserved the name of friends,
- And thine effect so lives in me,
- A part of mine may live in thee
- And move thee on to noble ends.
- LXVI.
- You thought my heart too far diseased;
- You wonder when my fancies play
- To find me gay among the gay,
- Like one with any trifle pleased.
- The shade by which my life was crost,
- Which makes a desert in the mind,
- Has made me kindly with my kind,
- And like to him whose sight is lost;
- Whose feet are guided thro' the land,
- Whose jest among his friends is free,
- Who takes the children on his knee,
- And winds their curls about his hand:
- He plays with threads, he beats his chair
- For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
- His inner day can never die,
- His night of loss is always there.
- LXVII.
- When on my bed the moonlight falls,
- I know that in thy place of rest
- By that broad water of the west,
- There comes a glory on the walls:
- Thy marble bright in dark appears,
- As slowly steals a silver flame
- Along the letters of thy name,
- And o'er the number of thy years.
- The mystic glory swims away;
- >From off my bed the moonlight dies;
- And closing eaves of wearied eyes
- I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
- And then I know the mist is drawn
- A lucid veil from coast to coast,
- And in the dark church like a ghost
- Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
- LXVIII.
- When in the down I sink my head,
- Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath;
- Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,
- Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
- I walk as ere I walk'd forlorn,
- When all our path was fresh with dew,
- And all the bugle breezes blew
- Reveillée to the breaking morn.
- But what is this? I turn about,
- I find a trouble in thine eye,
- Which makes me sad I know not why,
- Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:
- But ere the lark hath left the lea
- I wake, and I discern the truth;
- It is the trouble of my youth
- That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
- LXIX.
- I dream'd there would be Spring no more,
- That Nature's ancient power was lost:
- The streets were black with smoke and frost,
- They chatter'd trifles at the door:
- I wander'd from the noisy town,
- I found a wood with thorny boughs:
- I took the thorns to bind my brows,
- I wore them like a civic crown:
- I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
- >From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
- They call'd me in the public squares
- The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
- They call'd me fool, they call'd me child:
- I found an angel of the night;
- The voice was low, the look was bright;
- He look'd upon my crown and smiled:
- He reach'd the glory of a hand,
- That seem'd to touch it into leaf:
- The voice was not the voice of grief,
- The words were hard to understand.
- LXX.
- I cannot see the features right,
- When on the gloom I strive to paint
- The face I know; the hues are faint
- And mix with hollow masks of night;
- Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
- A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
- A hand that points, and palled shapes
- In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
- And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
- And shoals of pucker'd faces drive;
- Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
- And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
- Till all at once beyond the will
- I hear a wizard music roll,
- And thro' a lattice on the soul
- Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
- LXXI.
- Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
- And madness, thou hast forged at last
- A night-long Present of the Past
- In which we went thro' summer France.
- Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
- Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
- Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
- That so my pleasure may be whole;
- While now we talk as once we talk'd
- Of men and minds, the dust of change,
- The days that grow to something strange,
- In walking as of old we walk'd
- Beside the river's wooded reach,
- The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
- The cataract flashing from the bridge,
- The breaker breaking on the beach.
- LXXII.
- Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
- And howlest, issuing out of night,
- With blasts that blow the poplar white,
- And lash with storm the streaming pane?
- Day, when my crown'd estate begun
- To pine in that reverse of doom,
- Which sicken'd every living bloom,
- And blurr'd the splendour of the sun;
- Who usherest in the dolorous hour
- With thy quick tears that make the rose
- Pull sideways, and the daisy close
- Her crimson fringes to the shower;
- Who might'st have heaved a windless flame
- Up the deep East, or, whispering, play'd
- A chequer-work of beam and shade
- Along the hills, yet look'd the same.
- As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
- Day, mark'd as with some hideous crime,
- When the dark hand struck down thro' time,
- And cancell'd nature's best: but thou,
- Lift as thou may'st thy burthen'd brows
- Thro' clouds that drench the morning star,
- And whirl the ungarner'd sheaf afar,
- And sow the sky with flying boughs,
- And up thy vault with roaring sound
- Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
- Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
- And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
- LXXIII.
- So many worlds, so much to do,
- So little done, such things to be,
- How know I what had need of thee,
- For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
- The fame is quench'd that I foresaw,
- The head hath miss'd an earthly wreath:
- I curse not nature, no, nor death;
- For nothing is that errs from law.
- We pass; the path that each man trod
- Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
- What fame is left for human deeds
- In endless age? It rests with God.
- O hollow wraith of dying fame,
- Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
- And self-infolds the large results
- Of force that would have forged a name.
- LXXIV.
- As sometimes in a dead man's face,
- To those that watch it more and more,
- A likeness, hardly seen before,
- Comes out-to some one of his race:
- So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
- I see thee what thou art, and know
- Thy likeness to the wise below,
- Thy kindred with the great of old.
- But there is more than I can see,
- And what I see I leave unsaid,
- Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
- His darkness beautiful with thee.
- LXXV.
- I leave thy praises unexpress'd
- In verse that brings myself relief,
- And by the measure of my grief
- I leave thy greatness to be guess'd;
- What practice howsoe'er expert
- In fitting aptest words to things,
- Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
- Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
- I care not in these fading days
- To raise a cry that lasts not long,
- And round thee with the breeze of song
- To stir a little dust of praise.
- Thy leaf has perish'd in the green,
- And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
- The world which credits what is done
- Is cold to all that might have been.
- So here shall silence guard thy fame;
- But somewhere, out of human view,
- Whate'er thy hands are set to do
- Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
- LXXVI.
- Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
- And in a moment set thy face
- Where all the starry heavens of space
- Are sharpen'd to a needle's end;
- Take wings of foresight; lighten thro'
- The secular abyss to come,
- And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
- Before the mouldering of a yew;
- And if the matin songs, that woke
- The darkness of our planet, last,
- Thine own shall wither in the vast,
- Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
- Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
- With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
- And what are they when these remain
- The ruin'd shells of hollow towers?
- LXXVII.
- What hope is here for modern rhyme
- To him, who turns a musing eye
- On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
- Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?
- These mortal lullabies of pain
- May bind a book, may line a box,
- May serve to curl a maiden's locks;
- Or when a thousand moons shall wane
- A man upon a stall may find,
- And, passing, turn the page that tells
- A grief, then changed to something else,
- Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
- But what of that? My darken'd ways
- Shall ring with music all the same;
- To breathe my loss is more than fame,
- To utter love more sweet than praise.
- LXXVIII.
- Again at Christmas did we weave
- The holly round the Christmas hearth;
- The silent snow possess'd the earth,
- And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
- The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
- No wing of wind the region swept,
- But over all things brooding slept
- The quiet sense of something lost.
- As in the winters left behind,
- Again our ancient games had place,
- The mimic picture's breathing grace,
- And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
- Who show'd a token of distress?
- No single tear, no mark of pain:
- O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
- O grief, can grief be changed to less?
- O last regret, regret can die!
- No-mixt with all this mystic frame,
- Her deep relations are the same,
- But with long use her tears are dry.
- LXXIX.
- 'More than my brothers are to me,'-
- Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
- I know thee of what force thou art
- To hold the costliest love in fee.
- But thou and I are one in kind,
- As moulded like in Nature's mint;
- And hill and wood and field did print
- The same sweet forms in either mind.
- For us the same cold streamlet curl'd
- Thro' all his eddying coves; the same
- All winds that roam the twilight came
- In whispers of the beauteous world.
- At one dear knee we proffer'd vows,
- One lesson from one book we learn'd,
- Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd
- To black and brown on kindred brows.
- And so my wealth resembles thine,
- But he was rich where I was poor,
- And he supplied my want the more
- As his unlikeness fitted mine.
- LXXX.
- If any vague desire should rise,
- That holy Death ere Arthur died
- Had moved me kindly from his side,
- And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
- Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,
- The grief my loss in him had wrought,
- A grief as deep as life or thought,
- But stay'd in peace with God and man.
- I make a picture in the brain;
- I hear the sentence that he speaks;
- He bears the burthen of the weeks
- But turns his burthen into gain.
- His credit thus shall set me free;
- And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
- Unused example from the grave
- Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
to Verse LXXXI.
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