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.

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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:

LXXVII

With this section cf. Petrarch's 25th Sonnet, In Morte di Donna Laura, especially the lines

E certo ogni mio studio in quel temp 'era
Pur di sfogare il doloroso core

In qualche modo, non d'acquistar fama.
Pianger cercai, no già del pianto onore

(And certainly all my desire at that time was merely to ease in any way my troubled heart, not to win fame. I sought to weep, not at all the glory of weeping.)

II. 1850-51. A grief

LXXVIII

For the connection with the scheme of the poem, see Introduction.

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.

14. 1850-51. type.

17. 1850-51. regret, Regret.

LXXVIII

LXXIX

Addressed to Charles Tennyson, afterwards Tennyson Turner, the poet's favourite brother and coadjutor in the poems of 1827. For the reference in opening line, see last line of sec. ix.

6. In and after 1884. Nature's.

9. The brook at Somersby, so often celebrated in Tennyson's poetry.

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.

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I make a picture in the brain;

I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks,

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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

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Reach out dead hands to comfort me.

LXXX

13-16. A most obscure stanza: it seems to mean, my belief that he would have acted thus, that is, "turned his burden into gain," lightens my burden, and thus I profit from the influence of an example which exists only in assumption or in hypothesis; "his credit" appearing to mean the belief I place in him, what I credit him with-an awkward imitation of the occasional use of pronominal adjectives in Greek and Latin. Cf. the use of rós and σá in Odyssey, xi. 202-3. Possibly it may mean vaguely "influence," i.e. the credit which belonged to him in acting as he would have done. Cf. Ixxi. 5. It is one of those studiedly vague subtleties of expression which are so perplexing in Virgil and Sophocles as well as in Tennyson.

LXXXI

Could I have said while he was here

66

My love shall now no further range;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear."

Love, then, had hope of richer store:

What end is here to my complaint? This haunting whisper makes me faint, "More years had made me love thee more."

But Death returns an answer sweet:

"My sudden frost was sudden gain, And gave all ripeness to the grain, It might have drawn from after-heat."

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I wage not

LXXXII

any feud with Death

For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace

May breed with him, can fright my faith.

Eternal process moving on,

From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,

Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.

Nor blame I Death, because he bare

The use of virtue out of earth:

I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.

LXXXI

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Mr. Bradley's interpretation of this most obscure poem is probably the correct one; at all events, it is the only one which makes it intelligible. He proposes to place a note of interrogation at the end of the first stanza, an answer in the negative being assumed before the second stanza. The meaning will then be: Could I have said... love is mature in ear? No, I could not have said this, and therefore love had hope of richer store, for had more years been added to your life love would proportionately have increased. But Death says no-his sudden frost matured the grain, i.e. love.

LXXXII

8. Editions 1 and 2. And ruined.

For this alone on Death I wreak

The wrath that garners

He put our lives so far apart

We cannot hear each other speak.

in my

heart ;

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LXXXIII

Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.

What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,

The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dash'd with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,

Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud,
And flood a fresher throat with song.

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LXXXIV

When I contemplate all alone

The life that had been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow

To which thy crescent would have grown;

I see thee sitting crown'd with good,

A central warmth diffusing bliss

In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,

On all the branches of thy blood;

LXXXIII

II. First edition. dasht.

LXXXIV

For preface to this poem, see Introduction.

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