The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
Up the side I went,

To greet us.

And fell in silence on his neck:

Whereat those maidens with one mind

Bewail'd their lot; I did them wrong:

"We served thee here," they said, " so long,

And wilt thou leave us now behind?"

So rapt I was, they could not win

An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, "Enter likewise ye
And go with us:" they enter'd in.

45

50

And while the wind began to sweep

A music out of sheet and shroud,

We steer'd her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.

55

CIV

The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;

A single church below the hill

Is pealing, folded in the mist.

A single peal of bells below,

5

That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,

That these are not the bells I know.

Like strangers' voices here they sound,

In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow'd ground.

CIV

10

3. Waltham Abbey Church. The Tennysons had at this time removed to

High Beech, Epping Forest.

CV

This holly by the cottage-eave,
To-night, ungather'd, shall it stand :
We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.

Our father's dust is left alone

And silent under other snows:

There in due time the woodbine blows,

5

The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse

The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,

10

Has broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast,

And hold it solemn to the past.

By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,

15

But let no footstep beat the floor,

Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form

Thro' which the spirit breathes no more?

Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;

What lightens in the lucid east

Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown ;
No dance, no motion, save alone

Of rising worlds by yonder wood.

Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead

The closing cycle rich in good.

CV

I, 2. So all the earlier editions. Subsequent editions

To-night ungather'd let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand.

20. 1850-51. Through.

20

25

24. This refers to the scintillation of the stars" (Tennyson's note on Gatty).

27. First and second editions. measur'd.

CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying
is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow :
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.

5

10

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws.

15

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

20

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

25

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,

30

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

CVII

It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.

The time admits not flowers or leaves

To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,

And bristles all the brakes and thorns
Το yon hard crescent, as she hangs

Above the wood which grides and clangs

Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together, in the drifts that pass

To darken on the rolling brine

5

10

That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine, 15 Arrange the board and brim the glass;

CVI

32. A remarkable expression of Tennyson's belief in progressive Christianity. Cf. Life, i. 326, where it is said that he expressed his belief that the forms of Christian religion would alter, but that the spirit of Christ would still grow from more to more, when Christianity without bigotry will triumph, when the controversies of creeds shall have vanished, and

Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more,
But find their limits by that larger light,

And overstep them, moving easily

Thro' after-ages in the Love of Truth,
The truth of Love."

CVII

Hallam's birthday was 1st February 1811.

6 seqq. Recalling Alcæus, Fragment, xxxiv., and Horace, Odes, 1. ix. 1-8. II. Gride" is here used in the very uncommon and perhaps unwarrantable sense of harshly grate. Cf. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, III. ii.:—

Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds.

Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;

Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev'n as he were by ;

We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate'er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.

20

CVIII

I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind :

What profit lies in barren faith,

And vacant yearning, tho' with might
To scale the heaven's highest height,

5

Or dive below the wells of Death?

What find I in the highest place,

But mine own phantom chanting hymns?

10

And on the depths of death there swims

The reflex of a human face.

I'll rather take what fruit may be

Of sorrow under human skies:

'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise, Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.

CVIII

15

15. Eschylus, Agamemnon, 171-72, Eumenides, 495, and the proverb μalnμara salhuara. Cf. Byron, Manfred, i. 1 :

Grief should be the instructor of the wise;
Sorrow is knowledge.