Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;

For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,

15

20

25

May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;

We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;

What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,

And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

30

35

15, 16. The best commentary on this fact, perhaps the one indubitably Godlike potentiality in man, is Dante, Paradiso, iii. 66–87.

19. Cf. Akbar's Dream:

There is light in all,

And light, with more or less of shade, in all
Man-modes of worship.

27, 28. Cf. Milton (At a Solemn Music):—

That we on earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise
As once we did, till disproportion'd sin
Jarr'd against nature's chime.

35, 36. An expression of the same humility which finds utterance in Ps. cxliii. 2, Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified," and in Wordsworth's prayer, "The best of what we do and are, Just God, forgive!" (Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, iii.). It may be paraphrased, Forgive alike not only all that has seemed to me to be sin in my life, but all that has seemed to me to be worth; for what man accounts "sin" and what man accounts "worth" are but human estimates and have reference to human relations; all that either can look to from God is forgiveness.

Forgive my grief for one removed,

Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;

Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

1849.

40

41. An illustration of one of Tennyson's essential characteristics, the adaptation of felicitous phrases from other poets. Cf. Troilus and Cressida, I. i. 106:Let it be call'd the wild and wandering flood. So infra, vi., "Vast and wandering," from Shakespeare, Richard III., I. iv. :— To find the empty, vast, and wandering air.

"

"

42. Cf. for this use of the word "confusions," Vaughan the Silurist (Dressing): "These dark confusions that within me nest." "Wasted means of course "desolated," as often in the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I

I HELD it truth, with him who sings

To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years

And find in loss a gain to match?

Or reach a hand thro' time to catch

The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss :
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,

I

5

10

1. To an inquiry made as to whom the reference was, Tennyson wrote: "I believe I alluded to Goethe. Among his last words were these: 'Von Aenderungen zu höheren Aenderungen'" (Life, ii. 391); while his remark (Id. 392) that Goethe was consummate in so many different styles"

explains the rest.

3. Cf. Saint Augustine, Serm., iii., De Ascensione, "De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus," and Longfellow's Ladder of Saint Augustine, founded on this passage.

7. Tennyson seems fond of this image. Cf. sec. lxxii.,

and Tiresias,

When the dark hand struck down thro' time,

Their examples reach a hand

Far thro' all years.

8. Cf. Shakespeare's "interest of the dead," Sonnets, xxxi. 7.

9, 10. Cf. with this sentiment, one of the central doctrines of the whole poem, Sir Henry Taylor, Philip van Artevelde, I. v. :—

'Tis an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.

Where sorrow's held intrusive and turn'd out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

26

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
"Behold the man that loved and lost,

But all he was is overworn.

II

Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,

And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.

O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom :

And gazing on thee, sullen tree,

Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,

15

5

10

I seem to fail from out my blood

15

And grow incorporate into thee.

III

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?

I

13. With the "victor Hours" of sorrow's noviciate cf. the "conquer'd years" in cxxxi, of sorrow's μúorns.

II

For the significance of this poem, see Introduction, and cf. with it xxxix. 13. The three first editions read "the sullen tree.'

III

Misgivings respecting the wisdom of cherishing grief (cf. sec. ii.), seeing that it involves the universe in its own desolating darkness.

"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:

"And all the phantom, Nature, stands-
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,—
A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,

Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?

IV

To Sleep I give my powers away;

My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
O heart, how fares it with thee now,

That thou should'st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,

"What is it makes me beat so low?"

5

10

15

5

7-8. It is surely not necessary to define with precision the imagery here employed: it is the vision of Lucretius, the vision of one who looks on the universe without faith and without hope. But with "from out waste places comes a cry" may be compared

of sec. xli.

10. 1850-51. Her.

the gulfs beneath,

The howlings from forgotten fields,

13. I.e. the passion of sorrow.

15. Cf. Othello, 1. iii.: "The vices of my blood."

IV

I seq. In sleep the will is in suspense, and memory the prey of confused impressions of pain and loss.

II, 12. The temperature of water can be lowered below freezing point without congealing, but if shaken or disturbed it at once congeals into ice.